The Spring/Summer 2023 Menswear collection by Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons is an  expression of curated processes. Fashion here is evoked through context, the juxtaposition of  elements and garments, fashioning an impression, creating style. Fashion as a manner, a way  as well as a means of appearing. An expression of choice. 

The practice of design – of fashion – is one of decision-making, curation alongside creation. The tools of this collection are direct, recognizable, archetypal pieces – suits, overcoats, sweaters, shirts, denim, leather. Known garments are reinvented through context. There is  always a complexity of thought behind apparently simple results, a process of refinement to  uncover the fundamentals of dress.  

Brought together in unusual combinations, individual garments – often classic in and of  themselves – can have a different impact. Inspirations are malleable, elastic – leather shorts  and checked patterns can simultaneously evoke memories of childhood, domestication or  sophistication. There is a friction in the meeting of these reference-points, where a different  identity is fashioned. 

Silhouettes are pulled close to the body, proportions abbreviated. They are evocative of youth,  therefore energy and vitality. There is a freshness and lightness to clothes that permit the  body to move freely, a consciousness of its form and dynamic, an innate freedom and joy. 

Reduction results in streamlining: extraneous details are shorn, collars removed on shirts and  coats. Trousers draw close, cropped at the ankle or into brief shorts. A sequence of tailored  black suits are a logical conclusion to this system of refinement. In stripping away decisively there is a physical and emotional relief – a freshness, a lightness. 

The show decor conceptualizes intimacy: a representation of a mocked-up house, blown  overscale, is executed entirely in raw-edged paper. Reflective of the human and the real – the  quotidian and everyday, in material and image, both fashioned into something exceptional – it functions both as a backdrop to the clothes and a protagonist unto itself, another context  that challenges our perception.