Trends(11 OCTOBER)
The Skirt Won
Prada sent out 63 looks and not one pair of trousers. The real story is where the hardware went. Velcro, snaps and crinoline moved to the outside.
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- The Detail
The parts of a skirt that normally hide did the talking at Prada. Velcro, metal snaps, crinoline: the hardware that holds a skirt shut or up usually sits out of sight. For Spring Summer 2027, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons put it on the surface. In the house’s own words, crinoline, “an internal component, becomes decorative layer, or protective shell”, and Velcro becomes “the base for crystal embroideries, without denial of an inherent functionality”.
That is the argument of the show, and it explains everything else in it.
The rule
Prada called the collection The Skirt. On 22 September in Milan, the designers sent out 63 looks, each built around a skirt. No trousers, no dresses. Fixing the garment freed everything else: the notes describe the skirt as “the single fixed parameter for projection of ideas”.
The hardware
A run of plain wrap skirts were held shut with wide bands of Velcro, and the Velcro carried the embroidery, clusters of crystals on the scratchy side you would normally hide. Snap fasteners were blown up and jewelled. A group wore the crinoline over the skirt instead of under it, the cage turned into a shell. Some fabrics misled on purpose: cotton treated to pass as leather or suede. Under shiny black nylon overskirts, florals and plaids showed through.
On top: sweaters, shirts and a lot of very small bras worn as tops.
The hardware, up close
- 01Look 11. Grey wrap with a purple embroidered band.
- 02Detail, Look 11. The embroidered band, closer.
- 03Detail. A black wrap skirt with a pink embroidered band, and the bag.
- 04Look 60. Grey skirt with oversized press studs, black bandeau.
Photos: Gorunway.com. Detail frames matched to looks by us.
Then and now
None of this came from nowhere. In 2006 Miuccia Prada said on television: “The skirt for me is like a T-shirt.” A uniform, in other words, but one you can bend any way you like. Around the same time the house staged Waist Down, an exhibition of Prada skirts made between 1998 and 2004 that travelled the world.
An all-skirt collection is a twenty-year callback, this time with a co-designer and with the construction itself as the subject.
“One of the most primitive, instrumental pieces of clothing in history for men and women.”
Elsewhere
Three other shows this month took the skirt somewhere new, two of them by putting structure where you could see it.
Miu Miu opened on knee-length checked skirts with blazers, and Olivia Colman made her runway debut in a black leather skirt suit. At MM6 Maison Margiela, a sweater was worn as a skirt, and the studio says it invented a “hip-paulette” to give it crinoline-style volume at the hips. The house frames the season as one question: “what happens when familiar things are worn differently?” At Cecilie Bahnsen, structured pannier pieces went on over trousers and jeans, with frames reported to be removable or adjustable.
Across the month
- 05Miu Miu, Look 5. A checked knee length skirt with a blazer.
- 06Miu Miu, Look 24. Olivia Colman in the black leather skirt suit.
- 07MM6 Maison Margiela, Look 41. A striped sweater worn as a skirt.
- 08MM6, detail. The striped sweater skirt, closer.
- 09Cecilie Bahnsen, Look 9. A striped pannier top over dark trousers.
- 10Cecilie Bahnsen, Look 20. A sheer embroidered peplum over jeans.
Photos: Gorunway.com. Cecilie Bahnsen: Alessandro Lucioni / Gorunway.com.
Our read
Be careful with the trend claim. Knee length ran through Prada and Miu Miu, but Prada also showed minis, and Miu Miu belongs to the Prada Group, so two shows from one company are not a market. Skirts over trousers at Bahnsen and a sweater-skirt at MM6 are two proposals, not a rule.
What does hold, at Prada, MM6 and Bahnsen, is where the structure sits. Crinoline over the skirt at Prada, padded volume at the hip at MM6, frames over trousers at Bahnsen. The parts that used to be hidden are now the design, and the wearer can see how the garment works. That shift matters more than any hemline: it treats construction as something to show, the way denim shows its rivets.
Twenty years ago Miuccia Prada called the skirt a T-shirt. This season showed what that means in practice. When the garment is fixed, the invention moves to the parts that hold it together, and those parts stop hiding.
GalleryTen more of the 63 Prada skirts10 images · open
- 11Look 4. Grey, knee length, with a bra top.
- 12Look 18. Pale blue under a black leather jacket.
- 13Look 20. A pale pink skirt under black.
- 14Look 21. A pale skirt with a bright waistband.
- 15Look 41. Full black skirt, black bra top.
- 16Look 42. Black skirt under a dark sweater.
- 17Look 49. Black wrap skirt, dark knit over printed sleeves.
- 18Look 55. Grey skirt with a layer knotted at the waist.
- 19Look 58. Black wrap skirt with a red tie, grey bra top.
- 20Look 63. The last look. White skirt with a green stripe.
Photos: Gorunway.com
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