Prada’s men are fragile
Roughly like this has been ringing about men’s fashion in my social media for the past few days: “No, are we back here again? How can this be shown? Nobody wants to look like that!”
The reason is Prada’s latest men’s collection shown at Milan fashion week recently. The pants are slim and the jackets are small. The silhouette is tight and hugs the models’ bodies in a way that feels almost provocative in a time when men’s fashion has been dominated by volume, layers and oversized proportions.
The reactions are quite surprising. Fashion, as you know, goes in cycles and after years of baggy jeans, huge suits and body-swallowing silhouettes, it was only a matter of time before the pendulum would swing back. There’s been an indication of this for a number of years – indie sleaze and other body-hugging trends have already snuck back in – but with the screening, it really took off on a wider front than before.
That the duo behind the fashion house, Muccia Prada and Raf Simons, present a slimmer silhouette is also nothing strange. Many people seem to want to read the collection as a copy of Hedi Slimanethe man who defined early 2000s slim menswear under Dior Homme, and that’s absolutely right. But the collection is also faithful to its own archive; its colors, patterns and the almost a little nice-ugly feel typical of modern Prada.
But there is something else that makes the reactions fascinating. They focus on the male body at a time when we see a marked increase in body and appearance fixation in men. In the manosphere’s obsession with jawlines, cheekbones and body fat, a larger, typically masculine body is prized. Prada’s men look like something else entirely. They are thin, sometimes almost fragile. And maybe that is precisely why the show provokes? It triggers the toxic masculinity. Minute of silence for all the chino guys with big calves who will soon find out that they won’t be allowed to leave their tight pants alone.
Don’t get me wrong, the models are very narrow and the criticism is therefore also reasonable. The skinny ideal is no more desirable than the muscular one – there are other bodies that are constantly excluded from the tight corners of the fashion world. The previously oversized fashion has offered a kind of protection. The oversize trend has allowed the body to disappear into the clothes and the volume has created distance between the wearer and the gaze. Now the body is highlighted instead. It can make the tight look on the catwalk feel pro-ana.
Prada thus pulls no straw for the inclusion stack by showing the collection on prepubertal boy bodies. But it still rubs a bit that it would only be gym guys with a failing degree of fashion who are allowed to wear tight clothes in civilian life. It’s not only ugly (sorry), but also unfair?
Whether the reactions are about the collection feeling like Hedi Slimane, or whether you are just not ready for a tighter silhouette is perhaps not so interesting. If you style it in the right way, it can in many cases be really cool. So if this slim look is to make a proper comeback with the fashion-conscious guys, perhaps the width of the pants is not the most interesting question. It is which bodies are allowed to wear it.
Siri von Bothmer is a freelance writer and runs the art and fashion platform HUD SPACE.
