Fashion Spaces in Practice: Prada S/S 2021

pages 28-39 in fashion spaces, a theoretical view

On 24 September 2020, Prada’s Spring/Summer 2021 womenswear show was streamed on the brand’s Instagram feed. The video was not a live-stream, but a pre-taped presen- tation taking the form of a montage, recorded without specta- tors present. For the show’s physical environment, OMA/AMO created a simple square space in shades of yellow, cut off from the larger room beyond by wall-to-ceiling curtains in the manner of a TV studio. Its only decorations – six chandelier-like clusters of monitors and cameras – hosted all the necessary technology. In contrast to the label’s Spring/Summer 2021 menswear show, where screens showed films by respected artists, here the screens simply showed the number of the look and the names of the models. These names were also incorporated into the soundtrack composed by British-Canadian electronic musician Richie Hawtin under his Plastikman alias. The models were all newcomers to fashion shows, and their vulnerability provided additional emotional intensity to an event conceived of as an examination of the dialogue between humans and machines.

Thanks to OMA/AMO’s past spatial experiments, the catwalk had already started to lose its role as the main compo- sitional principle of Prada’s fashion spaces well before the COVID-19 pandemic. However, for the digital presentation of new collections, there is now no need for a catwalk at all. When our theoretical model for fashion spaces was conceived, the physical show remained dominant. Yet its framework can still be applied to this new breed of digital fashion show, helping
us evaluate which aspects of the model are getting weaker, and which are becoming more potent, while also facilitating
a greater understanding of the collection being presented. In the case of Prada’s Spring/Summer 2021 womenswear show, the location (via Lorenzini 14, Milan) and the place (Fondazione Prada) were no longer important. Instead, the key to achieving a long-lasting metaspace lay in the design of the site, for which OMA/AMO utilised the typology of the TV studio rather than that of the fashion set, neatly capturing the spirit of our times, in which we watch endless screens in our pursuit of human connection.