Prada Men's SS25 Objects May Not Be Closer To Reality Than They Appear

Prada Men’s SS25 Objects May Not Be Closer To Reality Than They Appear

By Charmaine Tan
June 20, 2024

The sense of jamais vu in Prada Men’s SS25 collection comes from the trompe l’oeil of its details — sunglasses, belts, and hems are treated with the dynamism of illusion, poised to perform with unfettered, inebriated freedom.

When Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons introduced the Men’s Spring Summer 2025 show setting as a “fairytale ravescape”, they were tapping into a specific headspace that stored memories with permanent filters, all coloured and warped by the soporific effects of booze. Memories of youth come from real experiences, but how they remain in existence is a divine concoction of both the real and the unreal, the factual and the imagined — the minutest difference in detail being the key to birthing the devil of uncanny, understood most clearly by Prada.

At first glance, the accessories of SS25 don’t immediately call for your devoted attention. Larger-than-life visor sunglasses sit atop bodies that wore hand-me-down office apropos, all wrinkled and prematurely shrunken in the wash, or perhaps creased by long-hours of continuous wear (and then for even longer in the clubs). Trousers that pooled at the heel were ineffectively held up by a variety of belts, slung so low on the hip that they resembled hip chains more than trusted tools to improve fit, and thus formality. Collars and cuffs were starched at curious, flailing angles, but nothing else was too out of pocket — even the totes that could probably pass off as “eco” bags.

But pass off you should not, all of these features and the crafty secrets they hide. The show is simply titled ‘Closer’ because just leaning closer into the show (be it from the physical seats in the Fondazione Prada’s Deposito or into your phone or computer screen) will reveal that those totes are actually made not of cotton but of suede, and that stills of raves, horizons, beaches and even Roman architecture, are being permanently incorporated into the views from the Brutalist sunnies. Instead of functioning like a rear-view mirror, looking at your reflection via these visors is like looking into an alternative reality, prematurely edited so that you consciously interact with the elements of the visuals in a disorienting and dysfunctional manner.

The tripping out doesn’t stop there, for the said belts and their loops only exist as 2D leather appliqués on the trousers. Instead, find a semblance of real belts (some with many metal eyelets) rimming the opening of leather bags, the entire bag artificially aged to look like it lived a storied and well-weathered life. From detachable accessory to permanent decoration, this minor change in the belt’s role proffers the newfound relevancy of how things can be more than meets the eye especially in our digital day and age, and how perhaps this intention to spend more time in appreciating the smaller parts of life is the key to extracting tenderness, empathy and intimacy from the cold of our wired world.

What else is wired includes the seemingly animated collars and hems, or at least those that actually exist and are not mere effects of colour blocking or cleverly positioned buttons. Thin knits that mimic the pairing of V-neck sweaters over shirts poke fun at traditional formal attire, but in its doing so make you question how these attires have trialed through time to become uniform, and then an unexpected common sight in the raging conundrum of raves.

But the whole point of having this many trompe l’oeil moments in a less than 10-minute show is both a commentary on how closeness can alter the perception of the real and the imagined, as well as your relationship with the owners of your first ever ill-fitting shirts and trousers — parents. With time and effort, a short 10-minute show can unearth Mrs Prada and Simons’ minute but mighty declarations of truth, a loyalty to their craft and belief in honouring “the human urge for proximity, sharing space and commune.” We won’t even know how our vision will be impaired by the various landscapes on the sunglasses, if at all. But like everyone’s first rodeo at a rave, grab a drink, let loose, spread some love and see (through) it for yourself.