The fatidical concision of Prada's SS27 Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons continue to slim down the brand's silhouette

The English word “weird” comes from the ancient root “wyrd,” which means “fate” or “destiny.” We could therefore interpret it as “fatidical” rather than with the modern “strange”: what is “weird” is so because it speaks to us of a future we do not yet know, one that disorients. And for some seasons now, Prada’s proverbial strangeness, which in the days when only Miuccia was at the helm was pure whim or eccentricity, has turned into something, precisely, fatidico — something that at first glance disorients.

And it is precisely for this reason that many were disoriented by the return of the super-skinny silhouette in the Prada SS27 show: a reference to the razor-sharp tailoring of Raf Simons in the ’90s or a prediction of a future restricted silhouette that will return to fashion in a year or two?

We don’t know which of the two is true, or whether both are, but it is true that in recent seasons Prada has been betting on an increasingly slim and angular line, on designs that recall certain filiform and pointed lines from ’70s vintage, seasoning them however with delightfully out-of-place details.

Yesterday at Fondazione Prada we saw snap buttons on the collars of jackets where the Prada triangle can be attached or detached like an appliqué (obviously the laconicism of the three buttons without the appliqué is the most elegant, saying everything without showing anything) but also enormous belts with an almost medieval look, from which hung climbing pouches, a new and casual proposal for carrying an accessory.

Amid very sharp color contrasts, especially on white, and the now classic artfully recreated wear effects, the most striking proposal was using trucker jackets or leather jackets as shirts, that is, as the foundational layer of layering, under sweaters or other blazers. And indeed the structure of what vintage dealers call the Type-3 Jacket, the classic denim jacket, was replicated both in a transparent nylon version and in what appears to be a wool decorated with a Prince of Wales pattern, which appeared toward the end of the show and among the decidedly more interesting commercial pieces.

What matters, however, is that this silhouette is narrow, extremely narrow, almost meticulous in covering the models’ sparse bodies to the millimeter yet immediately revealing, at the first movement of the hips, strips of bare skin in a kind of icy provocation.

The idea of nudity and transparency recurred in a collection where every potential wink or malice was frozen into a very synthetic, sci-fi idea of seduction. Shirts, trousers and even t-shirts were recreated in a nylon mesh (the marketing geniuses who call it “technical silk” deserve a raise) that is at once revealing and vaguely erotic, yet also coldly clinical, a sartorial version of what Günther von Hagens did with the plastination of human bodies.

In contrast, as a more organic note of balance, there were the lived-in effects on many leather pieces, the chaos evoked by the shoes with their oblong velcro strips, the glasses with misshapen lenses, the optical prints with a vintage flavor (again very ’70s) but replicated with the alienating taste of an extraterrestrial computer.

As a wardrobe proposal, the one signed by Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons this season is undoubtedly bold. The value they focused on is a sharpness, a concision so focused that it burns. It would be wrong to speak of minimalism, however, given this abundance of details and finishes; in the evident love for vintage silhouettes modified to the point of seeming futuristic.

Theirs is a concision that dries out, synthesizes. A sensibility that seems like the expansion of Simons’ influence in the collections of a brand that continues to thrive in the market and that, therefore, is able to observe it as if from an invisible fourth dimension, abstract from the currents of time, thus producing a sense of abnormal novelty that, precisely because of its apparent strangeness, seems strangely prophetic. Fatidico, indeed.