Almost reality: Prada explores modernity in men's collection

As a designer, Miuccia Prada is nothing if not forward thinking. It was she who spawned so many trends we take for granted today, from the “It bag” phenomenon – the origins of which can be traced back to Prada’s 1980s hit nylon backpack – to the post-modern preoccupation with “ugly-pretty” designs such as artfully wrinkled tights and socks worn with sandals. But while Prada’s ability to predict trends could not be any stronger, profits have waned in recent years, a situation created in part, so the analysts say, because the business’s retail arm has been slow to embrace modernity.

Sunday night’s menswear show in Milan, then, was a good time to demonstrate her understanding of the most contemporary of subjects: virtual reality. Or, as she put it backstage, the fact that we all now occupy “a double world, between virtual reality on one side, and reality on one side”, our lives continually interrupted and fragmented by the internet and the media. Her reaction to this feeling was to create a collection rooted in the basics of clothes, in the way they touch and react to the body. It was, she said, “the opposite of virtual reality – hand-made, simple”.

Nothing is ever straightforward in Prada’s world, however, and her “simple” collection was not homespun in the obvious sense. If anything, models looked like technicians in the world’s most stylish space station, stalking the catwalk in nylon jumpsuits (“my new obsession”, she said) and in cuffed sporty trousers in peppermint and navy.

FacebookTwitterPinterest A model displays the Prada collection in Milan. Photograph: Maestri/WWD/Rex

Shirts were decorated with fragments from a disturbing cartoonish graphic that was also painted on the walls of the hangar-like show space, featuring robotic monkeys with lasers beaming from evil eyes, and arachnid alien craft landing in eerily empty suburban streets. Unexpected styling tricks and colour combinations made simple silhouettes slightly subversive: boiler suits were unzipped to display white and blue shirts underneath; grey and black striped cardigans were layered over pink and navy striped jumpers.

There were plenty of the sort of relatively accessibly priced accessories that might help Prada reach the fashion-curious millennial customer: jazzy socks, which were pulled up high, large bumbags on hips and hard-edged sunglasses with blue fade lenses that felt like an early 90s vision of the future.

The collection’s emphasis on virtual reality tied in with an exhibit on show at the sleek Milanese gallery owned by the Italian megabrand, Fondazione Prada, entitled Carne y Arena (Flesh and Sand) and produced by the Oscar-winning director Alejandro Iñárritu. This disorienting and heart-rending installation invites the viewer to put on a VR headset and embed with a group of frightened immigrants as they struggle to cross the border from Mexico to the US and was well reviewed at the Cannes film festival last month.

In April, Prada reported a 16% fall in profits for the year to 31 January, to €278.3m (£240m), with the brand embracing the digital economy – and selling its clothes online for the first time through retailers including Net-a-Porter and Matches Fashion – seen as key to its recovery.

Modernity was on several designers’ minds in Milan during men’s fashion week. On Saturday, at a small press conference before her show, Donatella Versace – wearing towering, Versace platform heels, her platinum hair shining –held forth on her process for designing a collection replete with classic Versacesignage, including reusing the 1989 logo.

“It’s about knowing what the consumer wants – in this case millennials, who never saw the iconic original prints the first time,” she said. Dolce & Gabbana were thinking about millennials, too, and swapped traditional models for a cast of 100 “influencers” with huge social media followings. By comparison, tackling modernity by exploring the concept of virtual reality was a route that felt particularly and thought-provokingly Prada.