Speaking backstage before the Prada show at Milan fashion week on Sunday, the co-designers Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons described their latest collection as “breaking the perception of what is perceived as typical luxury in high fashion right now”.

This was a purified version of Prada. The design duo called it a “rejection of experimental shapes, techniques and decoration” distilling the collection to pieces that are “intentional and meaningful”.

Simons compared it to pasta al pomodoro – “little ingredients but well executed”. The components of this Prada fashion recipe he said included “jeans, a jeans jacket, a T-shirt, one timeless blazer and a leather blouson”.

Prada said that once they had decided on their proposal of “one idea and variations on one idea”, their starting point was jeans as they are “the most universal item in fashion”.

The opening look on the catwalk consisted of white jeans, a white denim jacket and a navy blazer. None of the show’s 50 looks featured blue denim but those white jeans were reimagined in leather versions in a wide range of colours including banana, Pepto-Bismol pink and aubergine. Every jean and trouser was cut to be skinny, hitting just above the ankle bone and styled with pointy buckled shoes while jean jackets were cropped to just above hip bones resulting in flashes of flesh.

Calling “useless design” her new obsession, Prada said the collection was a reflection of this, stressing there was “nothing that I hate more in this period”. Simons, who has worked in partnership with Mrs Prada since 2020, spoke about taking each item so that they were then “re-materialised, re-scaled or their use is reversed”.

Leather jackets were shrunken while others were then styled underneath sleeveless patterned knits. There were also gauzy versions of the jeans and jackets that looked more like underlays than outerwear. The only accessories were little bag pouches that hung from belts, styled above rather than through trouser loops.

The catalyst to the distillation process was the realisation that “nothingness is very precise – to do this is far more difficult to achieve”.

During its womenswear show in February the duo proposed the idea of creating different outfits by removing or wearing the same pieces of said outfit in a slightly different way. Sunday’s collection also used this approach, but this time the designers were excited to see what the audience devises.

“History has also shown us how important fashion also came from the street, from individual thinkers or from like-minded groups of people,” Simons said. “To me, at least now, right now it feels that we have to think about that and we have to maybe stimulate that again. So it doesn’t feel so much like it’s only dictated by high fashion brands and their high fashion events.”

When asked whether shoppers nowadays were perhaps overwhelmed by choice, Simons reflected on how during his early 20s it was easier to relate to particular fashion tribes. “I was very interested in certain high fashion brands and designers and it was very easy to decide ‘that’s what I want’ but now it can be very confusing.”

He pointed to the 90s as a time in fashion when the catwalk really influenced what people wore on the high streets. “Right now, I think that’s [happening] less. At the end of the day we like people on the street to wear our clothes.”