White collar work is the religion of the 21st century. It’s where we seek validation and meaning; it’s how we understand our place in the world. The office is the place where we come together in search of something larger than ourselves. Especially in the wake of #metoo, it’s where morals and ethics are debated and reworked, cemented as mandates and codes that the rest of society follows.
Still, it was surprising that Prada’s Fall/Winter 2022 show took work as its theme—“Body of Work,” as the show was titled. The average Prada shopper probably has not been to an office in almost two years, trading business-casual for just casual—though from a cynical (or maybe just late capitalist) perspective, many people have made the pandemic about the right, the privilege, or the desire to work (or not work). Given that the global attitude towards work is, well, not great—so many people have quit their jobs in the United States that this period has been deemed “the Great Resignation”—you would think that Miuccia Prada, the ultimate weathervane of cultural moods, and Raf Simons would gravitate towards something more immediate.
But take a closer look at how Mrs. Prada and Simons, in the third menswear season of their unprecedented co-creative directorship, did it, and you might see that they were up to something else. Models in performatively grandiose outerwear, like big belted leather trenches and poodle fur-trimmed coats, walked a zigzag runway. Were they climbing the corporate ladder? Or mapping the disorienting path of a man’s progress? A number of celebrities joined the models’ ranks, with Kyle MacLachlan and Jeff Goldblum as the show’s bookends. “Everyday reality is valorized,” read the show notes. “Perceived uniforms of employ achieve new importance,” they went on: not just classic Mrs. Prada menswear uniform of two-piece suits and big coats, but Simons’s favorites like boiler suits and flight jackets. Even the tech nerd with his black turtleneck and his backpack was there. In other words, these are clothes which are the standard for all kinds of jobs, and not just office-bound ones. The show notes described how these uniforms—workwear archetypes in the broadest terms—were given a “sense of occasion.” Mostly that happened through a feeling of decadence: opulent textures like mohair and thick leather over slick leather, cinched waists, erotically imposing shoulders, and fabrics like taffeta-ish nylon—or a wonderfully fashion-y detail on the suit jacket, like big shoulder and funnel sleeve that seemed to cause the waists to pucker just a bit, creating a flirtatiously impromptu hourglass shape as the models walked. This gussying up of job-bound clothes, per the show notes, “[emphasizes] the value of work to society.”
Was it a pro-labor collection? Sure–everyone idolizes Mrs. Prada’s past as a communist activist in Yves Saint Laurent. But I think Mrs. Prada is done mythologizing Mrs. Prada (at least for now). It might be more precise to say: the zaddies are back. And it wasn’t merely that the casting (and coating) recalled the famous Fall 2012 collection, with Adrien Brody and Willem Dafoe in enormous sexy coats, that first introduced us to the Prada Zaddies—though more on that in a minute. What this collection actually seemed to be about, with its come-hither expensive outerwear, its silver fox casting, and troubled music, are the pleasures of adulthood. So obsessed are we with the whims and joys of youth that we forget the privilege and gratification of getting older. The pleasures it brings: the pleasure of independence, the pleasure of elegance afforded to you when you have a few lines in your forehead even if your cheeks are a bit less rosy, the pleasures of buying expensive stuff. Things like wine, like decision-making, like power. (Mrs. Prada loves power.) Adulthood means confidence, ambiguity, complexity. Adulthood means better art, better love, better food. Or even just a big amazing coat: a leather trench with big shoulders, which might look ridiculous on someone under 30 or even 40. The devil-may-care attitude required to pull off a fur-trimmed coat. (I saw it as a midlife crisis coat—the screaming-yellow Porsche of coats—but I’m sure others will have their own interpretations.) The “weekend wardrobe”—a V-neck sweater with a nylon pant that helps separate the demands of work from the liberty of leisure time, Mr. Rogers-style. Or an MA-1 flight jacket with a lean little lapel and a cinched-waist belt. All these details that in sum total create a sense of dignity, which is what the pleasures of adulthood are really about. As the show notes read: “Elegance becomes a means of celebration, of imparting significance.”
It almost felt like Prada was hosting a board meeting and last season’s muse was not invited. Recall that back in June, Prada took a series of skimpily-clad, super-slim models–some in fantastic little miniskirts–through a tunnel that burst out onto a Sardinian beach. The symbolism couldn’t have been clearer—newborn babies!—which frustrated those (like me) who love an ambiguous mindbender of a Prada collection and those (like me) who are embracing the pleasures of no longer feeling like a child. And I can’t see someone dancing in a fashion show film anymore and not think about TikTok. TikTok has been an enthralling muse to several designers, in particular Hedi Slimane, who has always created clothing about if not for young people. But even with Simons, who loves a disaffected young man, on board, Prada stands for something larger, and it should never pander. Part of the fun of Mrs. Prada and Simons’s collaboration (for fashion fanatics, anyway) has been sussing out the codes of each designer in the collections, and maybe this Fall 2022 show just leaned towards Mrs. Prada. Or maybe they just had a better alchemy: that flight jacket with the elongated lapels was a standout piece.
For Fall 2022, instead of the TikTok elite, Prada brought us celebrities. You might say that’s just as pandering as models shimmying on the beach, but Prada has earned it: it has always had a just-slightly-unorthodox relationship to celebrity. The vision of so many handsome actors—from the unflappable Damson Idris to Thomas Brodie-Sangster, his boyish brow knit with a concern only life’s big questions can bring—wearing those big coats and suits and imperiously frowning with dangly earrings was majestic. Perhaps Simons and Mrs. Prada have caught wind of how the archival fashion heads of social media have been obsessing over that aforementioned Fall 2012 collection, which envisioned manhood—adult masculinity—as rigorous, beefy, and intellectual. The show notes claimed that the celebrities “brought a new facet reality”—which seems sort of out-there, even incongruous, given the understanding many of us have about Hollywood’s relationship to reality and work. (Both tenuous.) Still, look at how these professional pretenders walk. Almost all lacked the trained elegance of a career model, and that injected a little realness, or maybe humanity, into the highly choreographed stamina of the runway. Goldblum’s bizarro stroll and smize–that was a rollercoaster. Even watching via livestream, it was dazzling. Was he going to fire us, or give us all a raise?
Prada is always defining and redefining Prada—even its Fall 2021 ad campaign was about “the Prada-ness.” (A nice message about how the journey of the self never ends!) But Prada is also a brand obsessed with reemphasis, and this show reemphasized that Prada is something like cocktails or love affairs or financial independence you aspire to grow into. It’s also complicated, obtuse, and rewards those who have lived and read a lot. It rewards lingering over, it delights in complication; and when it is straightforward, like with the unquestioning desire that a piece like the oversized napa leather bomber from the Fall 2021 collection is intended to elicit, its message is in the pricetag ($6,000, for those too afraid to click through): it’s not for the kiddies. It’s one of the few sacred things that an aging human being who cares about culture and style has to look forward to in this life! Prada is back to business, back to serious matters—like an adult closing the door to a teenager and saying, “You wouldn’t understand.” At least for now.
