Prada Changes Tone. A Provocative Grand Tour at Vivienne Westwood

«The most important thing for us was to find a change of tone: from aggressive and powerful to gentle, calm, human» says Miuccia Prada expressing the feelings of herself and Raf Simons, co-creative director, at the end of the Prada show.

The demolition of superstructures, the reductio ad un unum by pursuing impulse instead of reasoning is the intent that pervades the entire test: impossible and made even more poignant by the fact that the dismantling of meaning and power, if you look closely, is not fully realized or does not occur at all, but reverberates everywhere with the compressed energy of an unfulfilled desire - whether you like it or not, fashion is a highly thought-out staging, especially at this height of the spectrum, where a laboratory and manufactured process insists relentlessly. Everything is bare: the set does not exist at all, so the empty room of the Deposito of the Fondazione Prada is dressed only with enormous lobed carpets, abstractions of flowers between kindergarten and salle de bain. The collection notes are reduced to a barrage of lapidary phrases, among which stand out «unlimited combinations of elements / simple light-heartedness / imaginary places». The clothes, finally, have bare and essential lines, or archetypal ones like the acetate tracksuit and the overcoat, and always tend decidedly towards the infantile, with shirts that lengthen like aprons, trousers that shorten like rompers, and the distinction between male and female languid in a prepubescent position. Above all, lacquered straw hats and trekking backpacks in hand for moments of immersion in nature. The desire to go against the grain, to avoid competitive poses is laudable, but it translates once again into a sort of cold infantilism that is somehow contrary to the initial urgency. It would be interesting, in the idea of ​​the change of tone, to witness a real change of pace, a break in the formula, otherwise they are words in the void and reiteration of the known.

The punk, glassy, ​​messy and spontaneous rebellion, with the symbolic middle finger always raised in the face of the righteous, is part of the ethos of Simon Cracker , the joint project of Simone Botte and Filippo Biraghi, based on recovery and bricolage and harbinger of an immediately recognizable, marginal and challenging aesthetic. There is something adolescent in the obstinacy with which these two authors resist the idea of ​​conforming, bringing together on the catwalk the cream of Milanese outcasts, but this collection has a more adult rigor, consciously and expressly Margielian, which removes the color and refines the shape, and the result is convincing.

At Magliano , Luca Magliano takes a sabbatical: instead of a fashion show he proposes a film, while the collection itself is conceived around the idea of ​​suspension, and moves liquid and porous between deconstructed formalities and hybridizations with other worlds - noteworthy are the crepe de chine running suits - confirming and enhancing the authorial point of view in the obligatory focus on the product.

Andreas Kronthaler, at Vivienne Westwood , returns to show in Milan and chooses a café under the arcades of San Babila to stage an idea of ​​a Grand Tour with a high level of provocation and tailoring, as per the British cliché. It is totally Brit, and of a radical and fascinating anachronism in the convinced evocation of atmospheres of spruced-up privilege, the world built by Simon Holloway for Dunhill . You appreciate it or you find it out of time, tertitium non datur, but you can't help but praise the impeccable execution, without the slightest flaw.