Prada SS27: A Study in Skirts

There are very few times I feel luckier than when I get to sit front row at a Prada show. As a longtime Prada stan, watching Miuccia Prada and her hand-picked collaborator Raf Simons' genius in motion is still one of those fashion moments that is difficult to put into words.

You know you are about to see clothes that will make you reconsider everything you already own and wonder why none of it is near as cool.

For Spring/Summer 2027, I might have been particularly lucky because Prada decided to devote its attention to one of my favourite pieces of clothing: the skirt. It also happens to be a favourite of Mrs Prada herself - call us besties.

By Cynthia Jreige

And there were skirts. So many skirts. The premise was deceptively simple: take one of the most familiar garments in our wardrobes and see just how many personalities it can have. Rather than constantly introducing new silhouettes, Miuccia and Raf worked within a recognisable form and kept disrupting it through fabric, construction, proportion and embellishment.

Some felt industrial, others incredibly precious. Re-Nylon and ciré were pleated, cotton was manipulated to resemble leather or suede, crinoline escaped from underneath the clothes to become part of what we actually saw, and oversized metal snap fasteners were treated almost like jewellery.

The crystal-bedazzled skirts were particularly to our taste at JDEED. Prada recreated the effect of guipure lace entirely in crystal, while elsewhere contrasting Velcro became the unlikely foundation for crystal embroidery. Something associated with pure practicality suddenly became decorative and desirable, without completely losing sight of why it existed in the first place.

That tension is where Prada is always at its most interesting. Something ordinary becomes precious, something technical becomes feminine, and something you would normally hide inside a garment suddenly becomes the reason you're looking at it.

There was also a sense that none of these skirts had one prescribed way of being worn. Velcro fastenings allowed shapes to shift and embellishments to be revealed or concealed. One pleated skirt extended beyond the body, leaving its excess fabric to be carried in the hand. Layers opened and closed, exposing what was underneath.

And what surrounded the skirt mattered just as much. Paired with a sweater, shirt or bra top, essentially the same garment could suddenly read completely differently. It made the styling feel a little like an ongoing experiment; to be fair, there's nothing better than a clash of fabrics, patterns, colors or style that suddenly works together, which happens a lot under the Prada sun.

Perhaps that's why a collection focused so obsessively on one garment never felt repetitive. Prada was asking how much possibility can still be found in something we think we already understand.

For someone who already considers the skirt one of the best things in a wardrobe, I didn't need much convincing. But give me a Prada skirt covered in crystals and apparently I can love it even more.

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