Prada SS25: On the Edge of Tomorrow
Prada does not follow trends, it shapes them. Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons' seasonal collections, especially Spring/Summer 2025 womenswear collection, in turn act like a crystal ball into the future of fashion.
SS25 especially prescient, and could feel like a stylistic departure for a famously stoic fashion house that's more broadly associated with classic clothing than anything else.
But Prada's runway shows are the venue for its more outré inclinations. These are seasonal opportunities for Prada to publicly dabble with slime or situate swimcaps as statement pieces.
So take the more overt adventurousness of Prada SS25 as an experiment for the sake of pushing the medium forward, as Prada so often does.
Not that there weren't any recognizable homages to Prada's past, by any means. Several models wore the classic Prada silhouette — boxy top, slim pants — and, occasionally, Simons' preferred short-shorts. There was even a throwback for the real Prada heads: The SS25 womenswear show revived Prada's SS21 stacked brogue shoes as even taller platform derbies.
Otherwise, though, Prada went all-out.
Sunglasses were especially explosive, some with lens expanded into gargantuan bug-eyed panes, others contracted into layered shapes that recall snow goggles, and a few integrated into swiss-cheese'd bucket visors.
This was recognizable eyewear rendered near-alien through a push of the envelope, a motif maintained in the apparel, which ranged from beaded skirts hoisted by waist-wrapping belts and cargo-pocketed tube tops.
Exploratory stuff to be sure but grounded by an ample array of retooled Prada classics: slouchy bomber jackets, trim polo shirts. Crisp, clean, outrageously urbane.
This is just what Prada does and does very well at that. Each season, Miuccia Prada and Simons tinker with established codes to create something at once fresh and familiar, never complacent and always curious.
Prada knows newness need not come at the expense of the understated opulence at the maison's core.
And so Prada is able to simultaneously shift fashion and cling to its core tenets in a way that none of its peers have ever quite managed to do. It's why Prada is still so incredible vital despite maintaining the same creative director for decades and why young people adore it as much as old-timer admirers. Prada is simply fashion in its highest, purest form, tomorrow's luxury today.
