Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons opened Milan Fashion Week with a collection that stripped the wardrobe to its waist and rebuilt it around a single, radical proposition: the skirt is not a limitation. It is a framework for freedom.
MILAN — The invitation arrived covered in the soft, furry loop side of Velcro, conspicuously missing its abrasive hook counterpart . A material whose entire purpose is attachment, presented incomplete. It was the first clue that Prada’s Spring 2027 women’s show would be an exercise in purposeful contradiction — an interrogation of a garment so familiar it is rarely questioned, presented as the season’s most radical proposition.
At Fondazione Prada on Tuesday evening, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons sent out sixty-three looks, every single one built around the skirt . No dresses. No trousers. No shorts. Just skirts — knee-grazing, midi-length, pleated, wrapped, sheer, embroidered, and occasionally held together by industrial Velcro that had been transformed into something approaching jewellery .
The show notes were unambiguous: “Engineered for freedom, the skirt is a Prada obsession” . For a house that has spent decades defining the parameters of modern femininity — often through garments that resist easy categorisation — the statement felt less like a theme than a thesis.
“Like a T-Shirt for a Man”
During a seated preview with a dozen editors before the show, Miuccia Prada repeatedly rearranged the blush-coloured silk number she was wearing, a skirt with a scalloped hem. She likened its rectangular shape to the frame of a painting.
“So you are obliged to put ideas on the frame,” she said .
Raf Simons recalled an old Charlie Rose interview in which Prada told him that a skirt for a woman is the equivalent of a T-shirt for a man . In his mind, a skirt could answer to any occasion — “when you want to be sexy, you want to be luxurious, you’re going to work, or you want to be at ease with your kids” .
That philosophy translated to a runway where skirts were paired with tiny bralettes, fluffy jumpers, tucked-in technical windbreakers, biker jackets, camisoles, and slim-cut shirts . The message was not that the skirt is precious, but that it is versatile — the foundation of an outfit rather than its finishing touch .
The Garment That Built Prada
For all its conceptual ambition, the collection was also an act of excavation. In 2005, Prada staged a blockbuster exhibition in Shanghai called “Waist Down,” a celebration of the skirt that later travelled to New York . The curator, Kayoko Ota, noted at the time that fashion criticism tends to focus on the torso, rarely paying attention to “what’s happening at the waist or from the waist down” . It is, she observed, “where a lot of movement takes place” .
Spring 2027 returned to that territory with a precision that felt like a homecoming. Making a comeback were the elements that have propelled the brand for decades: “ugly” prints with psychedelic overtones, technical materials like black nylon, ladylike handbags and heels, and crystal embellishment — here embedded on the thick Velcro closures of wrap skirts, which Prada described as “one of the most primitive, instrumental pieces of clothing in history for men and women” .
There were pencil skirts and pleated skirts, sheer layered versions and cotton treated to resemble leather or suede . Glass rhinestone flowers covered otherwise transparent swaying pencil skirts . Some were merely fragments — apron-like panels slung around the hips without quite meeting . A psychedelic micro-floral skirt with a slit so high the models’ silk underwear peeked through was held together with a white bow .
The styling leaned into the tension between prim and perverse. Bandeau tops and bralettes appeared in loud, playful patterns . Leather pleated skirt-and-jacket sets in bleeding acid colours alternated motocross shoulder pads with Peter Pan collars . Guido Palau’s hair was undone and ratty, wilder than ever . As W Magazine observed, the collection worked against the notion that Simons had stripped the erotic out of the house .
A Prada Vocabulary, Refined
The show opened with a black top, a red pencil skirt, and rounded patent heels that immediately signalled one of the season’s key accessories . What followed was a survey of skirt forms — pencil, pleated, wrapped, sheer, embroidered, leather — each reinterpreting the garment through a different construction .
The Velcro was the collection’s cleverest device. Used as a fastening, it allowed skirts to adapt, to modify shape, altering visual affect through the revealing or concealing of embellishment . Magnified metal snap fasteners were jeweled. Crinoline, an internal component, became a decorative layer . In one of the show’s more subversive gestures, Velcro strips were embroidered with delicate flower embroidery — femininity that functions always remaining the foundation .
Accessories carried their own weight. A violet snakeskin bag felt primed for streetwear obsession . Sunglasses were futuristic and asymmetric, with just one side framed . Pink bows dressed up satin heels, and laser-cut black kitten heels were given floral brooches . But the viral moment came in the final six looks: the “boob bag,” a tiny pouch attached to satin tops with striking cut-outs, likely capable of holding “little more than enough change for a cappuccino at your favourite Milanese café” .
What It Means
WWD called it “one of their best and easiest-to-like shows in years” . Vogue Singapore noted the collection felt like “a body-part slot machine of eras, shuffled into looks that are unmistakably Prada,” while gently questioning whether the house has become “content to play within its own sandbox” . Marie Claire framed it as a quiet argument about power: for much of modern fashion history, women who wanted authority dressed like men, trousers first representing freedom and then becoming a corporate uniform. “No single skirt was the power skirt here,” the magazine wrote. “Nearly every version could assume the role” .
If Prada is the bellwether it so often proves to be, the message for Spring 2027 is simple. Wear your skirt like a trouser. Wear it often and without ceremony. As Miuccia Prada herself once put it: “For me, the skirt is like a T-shirt. I put all my ideas there” .
This show was that philosophy writ large — pleats, columns, minis, and full A-lines treated not as precious but as reliable, repeatable, and ready for whatever sweater, shirt, or jacket you already have. You don’t need a new wardrobe. You might just need a new skirt.
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