There was a time—wasn’t there?—when designers stood up and issued commandments. Skirts shall be short. Shoulders shall be bold. Thou shalt obey. It all felt so clean, so decisive. So… unrealistic. Because in real life? I stand in front of my closet at 8:07 a.m. holding two completely incompatible things thinking, Can I make this work? Do I even care?

At Prada, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons weren’t interested in diktats. They were interested in that exact closet spiral. “What do I wear with what? What is possible? Can I do it another way?” Simons said backstage. And honestly? That’s the real runway. The one in your bedroom, five minutes before you’re late.

To make the point, they cast just 15 models. Each wore four layered looks. Sixty exits in total—but recycled, reworked, peeled back in front of us. At first it felt confusing. Wait, didn’t we just see that coat? But then it clicked. Oh. OH. It’s the same woman, the same pieces, just… rearranged. Not a fashion fantasy. A wardrobe. A life.

Take Julia Nobis. First pass: long black coat, neat hand-knit scarf, very composed. Second pass: coat gone, chunky zip sweater revealed. Third: sweater off, and suddenly the “skirt” is actually a dress. Fourth: stripped back further to a sheer shift and modest, almost prim underthings. Foundations exposed, but not theatrically. Just matter-of-fact. Bella Hadid, Liu Wen, Amanda Murphy—same rhythm. Add. Subtract. Reconsider. Repeat.

Like the menswear show in January, the clothes looked lived-in. Shirt cuffs faintly soiled. Hems frayed. Harrington jackets peeling to reveal houndstooth underneath. Oxford heels pre-scuffed. It could have read careless. It didn’t. If anything, it felt tender. The secondhand boom has already proven we don’t need pristine. Sometimes the flaw is the appeal. Sometimes the history is the point.

They were also digging—very consciously—into their own archives. Not nostalgia. More like… continuity. A floral from one season. A particular pink duchesse satin from another. The way the models clutched their coats (pure Miuccia). The slouchy, flower-embroidered socks (again, unmistakable). For anyone who has ever stared into their wardrobe thinking, What would Mrs. Prada do?—and let’s be honest, that’s a lot of us—this felt like a quiet answer.

Simons insisted it wasn’t about narrative. Not a story with a beginning, middle, end. More about freedom. The freedom to combine. To layer. To try again.

And that’s what lingered. Not “wardrobe solutions” (too neat, too final). More like wardrobe suggestions.

Why not tuck a crisp poplin shirt into an embellished slip?
Why not wear the crystal embroidery on the inside, where only you know it’s there?
Why not peel something back and see what happens?

Not rules. Just permission.