A more in-depth take a look at Prada’s stripped-back S/S 2026 present set

The Prada present is all the time one of the anticipated occasions of Milan Vogue Week. And, whereas the garments take centre stage, a lot of the joy is all the way down to the set. Since 2018, the reveals have been staged contained in the hangar-like Deposito area at Fondazione Prada – an enormous clean slate that’s set the scene for all method of transformative world-building. Slime has dripped from ceilings onto sci-fi metallic flooring, a big paper home turned friends into dolls in a playhouse, and final season, a dimly lit scaffolding construction had the distinct feeling of a rave. However for S/S 2026, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons appeared to declare: let there be mild.

Revealing the often hidden home windows of the Deposito, the showspace was flooded with ethereal brightness – a stark distinction to the heavy, multi-storey construction of A/W 2025 – and friends had been ready to absorb its uncooked, industrial magnificence. The set was designed by the Rotterdam-based structure studio OMA, led by Rem Koolhaas. The Milanese home has collaborated with the studio for over 25 years – a partnership that started in 1999, when Prada approached OMA to design its New York retailer on Broadway. The stark wood steps down into the shop, and its swooping manipulation of scale, have since change into one in all vogue retail’s most memorable statements.

‘Typically it’s good to mirror and be just a little bit extra calm’: Prada’s pared-back present set for males’s S/S 2026

Protecting issues easy this season, solely a handful of fluffy, flower-shaped carpets scattered throughout the ground – evoking classic Nineteen Seventies prints – gave something away in regards to the assortment. Sheds of furry hair clung to friends’ sneakers earlier than they sat down to look at the present unfold, whereas KLF’s ambient 1990 album Chill Out, layered with the chirps of birdsong, performed overhead. The garments themselves had been about ‘a shift of perspective – dismantling of which means, and dismantling energy’, stated the model in an announcement.

In observe, this meant a surreal escapism, with clothes spanning micro-shorts, as if pulled upwards on the hemline, vibrant raffia hats and tabard-style tops adorned with floral print. There have been additionally tracksuits, shrunken in dimension and recalling sportswear of the Nineteen Seventies. Equipment had a sense of performance, like a collection of backpacks, bumbags and duffels, grasped by fashions within the hand, whereas different clothes riffed on masculine archetypes – from the double-breasted go well with to navy apparel.

‘That is the primary time the Fondazione is totally naked, with the sunshine coming in,’ stated Raf Simons backstage. When requested what prompted the change, Miuccia Prada added, ‘It’s on the market. You’re feeling it,’ little doubt referencing the unstable instances by which we live. ‘We needed to point out one thing on this second that, hopefully, feels optimistic and balanced,’ Simons continued. ‘Typically it is good to mirror and be just a little bit extra calm.’