Prada’s Spring Summer 2027 Show Asks: What Does Your Skirt Say About You?

“The skirt is like a T-shirt,” said Miuccia Prada, 20 years ago, on the Charlie Rose show. “I put all my ideas [on it], each collection, each season.”

Those words still ring true today: Mrs Prada and Raf Simons kicked off Milan Fashion Week with a spectacle of skirts for Prada’s Spring Summer 2027 show, held at Fondazione Prada. The collection, simply titled “The Skirt”, opened with a pretty provocative look: a model walked down the illuminated runway in a black lace bra, a bright red slit skirt, a pair of black patent leather pumps and nothing else. 

There were over 60 looks that followed, but none of them featured pants. It seems Mrs Prada and Simons were serious about the skirt. “We used the skirt as a framework for different ideas, different approaches, like a raw material to express concepts,” explained Mrs Prada. 

Ahead, we unpack the ideas – and the fabulous looks – that were presented at the Prada Spring Summer 2027 show.

See also: Watch The Spring Summer 2027 Shows Here

HIGHLIGHTS FROM PRADA’S SPRING SUMMER 2027 SHOW AT MILAN FASHION WEEK

The skirt as a canvas

For Prada’s designer duo, distilling their ideas into a single garment, the skirt, allowed for creative freedom. “The limitation of its simple shape can force ideas, make you reinvent the form,” said Mrs Prada. At the show, the skirt did come in many forms, all catnip for Prada collectors. There were pencil skirts with daring high slits, as well as more modest, pleated styles that flared out from the body. Flashy “jewellery skirts” were made entirely from crystals to resemble guipere lace, while otherwise ordinary wool skirts were made eccentric with a strip of contrasting Velcro, crystal embellishments and fraying edges.

Elsewhere, prints of bold brushstrokes epitomised the idea of the skirt as a canvas. Trompe l’oeil came into play, too, via cotton skirts painted and treated to look like leather. It has always been Mrs Prada’s way to express her ideas about femininity, womanhood and beauty through a skirt and its cut, print, and embellishments. In fact, in 2004, Prada even staged an exhibition called “Waist Down”, consisting entirely of the designer’s skirts. “With the skirt, you can do so much more,” she said in the aforementioned Charlie Rose interview. “You can put so much more creativity.”

A universal garment

For Prada’s Spring Summer 2027 menswear collection, Mrs Prada and Simons revolved their designs around jeans—a “universal garment”, as they called it. The skirt fills that role for their womenswear show. Mrs Prada described that most familiar garment in a woman’s wardrobe as flexible and adaptable, because of the many ways that people can wear them. (This was reflected on the front row as well, where guests like Uma Thurman, Naomi Watts, Alexa Chung and Yang Mi sat in their Prada skirts.) The collection offered skirts for different settings and occasions: the pleated skirts would suit the office, the crystal skirts are perfect for parties, the satin skirts adorned with rosettes would be nice for a dinner date, and the slit skirts could be worn for seduction.

The unexpected styling of skirts at the show, however, evoked Mrs Prada’s favourite quality: contradiction. A rugged leather jacket was thrown over a pink floral skirt, while those dressy satin skirts were paired with slouchy sweaters. You could be elegant, frumpy, sweet, and tough, all at once—it all comes down to how you wear your skirt.

Bringing sexy back

Prada is often regarded as an “intellectual” fashion brand, but this season, it reminded us that it can be sexy, too. The Prada woman showed plenty of skin, pairing bra tops and bandeaus with slit skirts. (Is she doing so for sex appeal, or is she just being realistic about climate change and Europe’s sweltering summers?) More intriguing are the models with messy hair who walked down the runway with their tops undone at the back, as though they had just rolled out of bed after a romp.

Other looks teased with their transparency, like the sheer pleated skirts worn with opaque knits. And there was even an element of kink to be found in the collection’s harness-like tops and skirts crafted in Prada’s Re-Nylon fabric. “To me the waist up is more spiritual, more intellectual, while the waist down is more basic, more grounded,” Mrs Prada once said. “It’s about sex. It’s about making love.”

Accessories of note

Prada doesn’t do boring, not even when it’s practical. The Spring/Summer 2027 show brought a new meaning to “bag charms” via the closing looks, where models sported harness-like tops with tiny, matching pouches attached to them. (Online fashion fans are calling them the “Prada bra bags”.) That combination of playfulness and utility is also seen in Prada’s half-and-half sunglasses, featuring contrasting lens shapes and frames. 

A woman’s work

It may have been a collaborative effort, but the Spring/Summer 2027 collection is peak Prada. As always, Mrs Prada was her own muse; when she took her bow at the end of the show, the 78-year-old designer was sporting the very sweater-and-skirt combo that was presented on the runway. Look 46 of the collection, in particular, echoed the ensemble that she had worn at Prada’s menswear show in June: a mid-length coat that cocooned the body, and just a flash of a skirt peeking out from underneath it.

These are all elements of the Prada uniform, which the designer began establishing with the Italian brand’s first runway shows in the ‘80s. Decades later, Mrs Prada’s style codes have proven timeless, and they greatly shape how women get dressed today. More impressive is the fact that Mrs Prada is still getting a kick out of designing. At the show, her indomitable spirit is captured in Julia Nobis’s look: a button-down shirt and a flowing skirt, bunched and held together with a powerful fist. Here is a woman who can do it all.