PRADA’S ALL-PAPER RUNWAY USES SIMPLICITY TO DEMONSTRATE ITS NUANCED APPROACH TO FASHION
Photo courtesy of Prada
21 jun 2022, for frame
Location
L.go Isarco, 2, 20139 Milano MI, Italy
Design
Brand
Prada showed its Spring Summer 2023 Menswear collection in a larger-than-life OMA-made paper house. The paper structure was fresh and light, communicating the fashion house's approach of taking the ordinary and making it new.
Key features
The Spring Summer 2023 Prada men's show by Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons once again materialized at the Deposito of the Fondazione Prada in Milan. However, this time OMA did not reimagine the Deposito as another typology of space but delivered a paper mock-up, executed entirely in raw-edged paper. The walls were made of rolls of regular white paper suspended from the ceilings, while the floors were covered sheets of brown paper. Furniture was created of corrugated cardboard in the same tone as the floors. The only colour accent in the Prada house was the Italian style red and white checkered print tablecloth, used as curtains.
Frame's take
OMA has explored Deposito's spatial possibilities since the pre-opening of Torre with the Prada Autumn Winter 2018 collection. This show’s set, however, was the first to take advantage of the significant proportion of the room; the paper Prada house was more than 10 m high. The scale of the house was exaggerated with the lowest windowsill starting approximately 1 m above the ground. OMA disguised the existing interior by using paper to cover the surface of the original space, an approach that is fairly straightforward.
Though with Prada and OMA, behind seemingly simple results there is always a complex, well thought out approach. The paper house demonstrated a more profound knowledge of architecture, namely paper architecture, which refers to the creation utopian fantasy projects that were not or could not be built in real life.
The presence of the Italian style red and white checker pint tablecloth added another layer to the significance of the space. These inexpensive tablecloths characteristic of Italian restaurants are symbolic of cozy, authentic and no-frills eateries. Though perhaps seen as ironic or outdated because of their long-standing use, Prada's Spring Summer 2023 collection used the pattern for for high fashion raincoats.
The combination of purely intellectual Koolhaas-style architectural thinking and the banality of the tablecloths is the essence of the Prada fashion house. Prada has a way of bringing together contrasting elements in unusual combinations unlike any other fashion house. The set spatialized the Prada-specific process of turning the everyday experience of wearing fashion into an alternative mechanism.