Prada Men’s Spring 2026: A Moment of Calm
What's inside the fashion bubble at Prada this season?
Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons conjured a utopian scene — a field of flower-shaped shag carpets dotted across the vast concrete floor of Fondazione Prada, natural light leaking into the space, along with birdsong and cowbells from the speakers.
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Their spring show echoed the mood of Rineke Dijkstra's arresting 1993 portrait of an adolescent boy on the beach in Odesa, Ukraine, wearing burgundy swimming trunks that are a tad too big: He's the picture of vulnerability, but also dignified and proud.
"We wanted a change of tone," Prada told a crush of reporters after the show. "The opposite of the aggression, power and nastiness that runs the world now. So we try to make a little contribution with something genuine, nice."
"Something that is calming, positive and balanced," Simons added as he sipped a tiny glass bottle of Coca-Cola. "Freedom to express yourself the way you want."
Prada and Simons opened their display with a starched white camp shirt tucked partially into bloomers, which had the same gawky aspect of the trunks work by Dijkstra's bather, resembling those paper cutout-doll garments held on with flimsy tabs.
The designers went on to scramble many familiar Prada garments — featherlight macs, flood pants, retro track suits, leather car coats and shrunken sweaters — in a freewheeling way.
New propositions included boatneck sweaters and smocks, plus army shirts elongated to tunic length. Pants were optional in at least a third of the exits.
Straw flowerpot hats and black dress socks — worn with nearly everything and slid into driving moccasins and bi-color boat shoes — confounded things further. Were these young men dressing for the office, the beach, the gym, a mountain hike, a best-legs contest?
Even if you couldn't pinpoint the wearing occasion, you felt the familiar Prada-ness of nerdy chic, here in a more youthful and gangly guise, the uniformly slender and shrunken shapes going against the grain of most other Milan collections.
What also came to the fore were striking color combinations — khaki and lavender, red with sky blue, celadon and pink — the crispness of the fabrics and an appealing, low-key forlornness reinforced by the jangly music and the overwhelming openness of the space.
The show made you think — and it offered respite at the same time.
Launch Gallery: Prada Men's Spring 2026 Ready-To-Wear Collection
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