Let’s Make Glamour Great Again! (But in a Relevant and Contemporary way)

Prada womenswear FW2025 tells us something truly important about modern femininity.

Prada men's and women's collections often share a common vision and aesthetic techniques, but not this time. In the FW2025 collection, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons had a different objective — to explore the definition of femininity in the modern world. And not just explore, but make a clear and articulate statement on this subject.

It's not that Prada hasn't addressed this subject before. In fact, it has been a consistent theme throughout the brand's history, and I would even say that Signora Prada began her work in fashion by seeking an answer to this question. She mentions that the search is ongoing because there is no single, definitive answer. Beliefs about femininity are a social, cultural, and political construct, and as these elements evolve, the way society represents women also changes. According to Signora Prada and Mr. Simons, we are currently witnessing of such changes, making it an opportune time to once again ask, "What is femininity?"

The main focus of this exploration was the deconstruction of all things patriarchal: the patriarchal bedroom with its pajamas, the patriarchal living room with its cocktail dresses, and the patriarchal Milanese street with its fur coats. This was all executed in a way that subverted the clichés. The fur collars on the coats billowed and flowed in waves, the manteau was wrapped in transparent plastic (a nod to Margiela, another cultural icon of both Prada and Simons), and men's striped boxers in size XXL were fitted with a wide elastic band, transforming them into a kind of puffy shorts.

I must give special mention to the shoes and accessories that appeared aged. The shoes and sandals looked scratched and generally worn, and the bags showed signs of wear and darkening at the seams, as if from prolonged use.

However, the most dramatic transformation occurred in the couture section of the collection. The dresses, coats, tops, and skirts were crafted from the same suit fabric, but it was crumpled and adorned with remnants of seams and scraps of fabric, with their insides turned out. This was complemented by a necklace made of crystals sewn onto a knitted elastic band, typically used to border a sweater’sround neck. All of this became the very embellishment that looked absolutely exquisite.

Once again raising the question "What is modern femininity?", Prada proposes that we search for it in the same places as before — beyond the boudoirs and beyond the red carpet, essentially outside of everything that is normative. Let’s hope that the great designers are correct and that the new femininity and the new glamour of our unpredictable future will embody just that.

Courtesy: Prada Group

PR & Communications: Prada & Miu Miu

Text: Elena Stafyeva