Of all the big reveals that fashion week has to offer, one of the most hotly anticipated can’t be modelled, worn or bought. Rather, it’s the theatrical sets for Prada’s seasonal shows. Staged inside the Prada Foundation, these backdrops make as much of an impression as the collections themselves. Some of the brand’s most ambitious projects have transformed the space into an abstract paper doll’s house (spring/summer 2023), a metal-clad cage (spring/summer 2024), a supersized office with plants and a trickling stream (autumn/winter 2024) and an intricate scaffolding system (autumn/winter 2025). Talk about thinking outside the box.
The team behind the seasonal transformations is Rotterdam-based architecture practice OMA and its research and design studio, AMO which were founded by by Rem Koolhaas. The fashion world’s go-to for masterminding original runway concepts (it also counts Loewe, Christian Dior and Louis Vuitton as clients), OMA/AMO has been working with Prada on its runway shows since 2004, granting its team a regular audience with co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons.
“The kick-off meeting is a conversation in which we exchange ideas, and Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons describe their ambitions for the upcoming show,” Giulio Margheri, an associate architect at the firm, tells Monocle, granting a rare insight into the Prada process. “The input typically focuses on atmosphere, feelings and directions. It’s more theoretical than visual, though they might sometimes bring specific images, references or fascinations.” From there, Koolhaas, Margheri and their teams translate their input into ideas for the space. “We propose concepts from various sources, which we gradually refine,” he adds. “Both offices like to challenge what can be done. There is restless research in doing new things, exploring and being curious. The functional requirements of the space are always very similar but the process and designs are always different.”
At the label’s most recent spring/summer 2026 menswear show, the runway was devoid of imposing structures and instead featured an open-plan design, complete with retro daisy-shaped shag-pile carpets. “We were trying to do something powerful with minimal intervention,” says Margheri. “This season was about avoiding overly large or complex scenography. Modesty was a key theme throughout the process.”
The set proved to be a blank canvas of sorts for a collection that was equally pared back. “It’s a powerful way to experience space,” he adds. “The show was one of the first times that guests saw the room in its rawness. It was very impactful in its simplicity.”
While forging a situational dialogue, there’s no hard-and-fast rule about the sets speaking directly to the collection, says Margheri, citing the office-cum-meandering creek of autumn/winter 2024 as an example. “The raised floor featured a natural landscape and office chairs. People made assumptions about what the show meant or what it was supposed to be. Sometimes there is an instant reaction to what a set represents. But we don’t see this as something that people need to question or answer.”
Working within the fashion-week calendar’s short timelines makes a successful set installation all the more sweet. Among Margheri and his team’s highlights? Dressing the space in corrugated metal panels, with slime descending from overhead panels. “For that show, we worked with materials not typically used in architecture but scaled them up to architectural dimensions,” he says. “It was one of the first – or maybe the only – times that the set was not fully tested before the show.” In the end, it all worked out, creating yet another powerful memory for the brand’s show guests. “It’s very rewarding to be able to get these things built in such a short time,” says Margheri. “Someone once described this process as a gym for architects – there’s always a need to come up with something new, find new materials and solutions, while working within similar parameters. It forces you to reinvent everything but the core programme itself.”
“The sun will come out again,” says costume designer Catherine Martin in a theatrical voice, as the brief spell of summer rain subsides and the sun begins to emerge through the tall windows of her suite at the Hotel Martinez in Cannes.
The French-Australian Oscar-winning designer has spent much of her life by the beach and seems to embody the optimistic, carefree spirit of the season. “During summer, you’re costuming yourself for what you hope will happen: to find yourself in a nautical place or inside a Raoul Dufy painting,” says the designer, who is dressed in a striped marinière Miu Miu tank top and a navy blazer thrown over her shoulders. “You want to feel connected to the seaside and the warm air. Prints become much more desirable at this time of year – a dress that slips over a swimsuit, a reclaimed-cashmere jumper that you can throw on when it gets chilly at night and beach clogs that you slide on after walking on the sand. It’s all about the feeling of barefoot luxury: simple and optimistic.”
It’s no surprise that Martin can instantly paint a picture of the idyllic summer wardrobe, imagining the characters and the worlds that they inhabit. She has been designing costumes for films such as Romeo and Juliet, The Great Gatsby, Moulin Rouge and Elvis for nearly three decades.
This summer, however, she has been spending time outside the costume department, conceiving her very first off-screen capsule collection with Miu Miu (its founder, Miuccia Prada, is a longtime friend and collaborator). She built the new range, which features deadstock fabrics, around an “imaginarium”: a visual diary of a trip to the south of France in the 1920s and 1930s, complete with archival images, collages and written artefacts. The result is a collection of sharp rowing blazers, featherlight slip dresses, cotton beach trousers and striped tops that will have you embracing nautical dress codes – and maybe even planning a trip to the French Riviera. It launched exclusively at the label’s newly-refurbished London flagship on New Bond Street, with a worldwide launch set to follow on June 21. A short film accompanying the collection’s launch, dubbed Le Grand Envie, marks Martin’s directorial debut: her partner, the director Baz Luhrmann, encouraged her to take the leap. It is set in a southern château and captures the hedonism associated with the region.
“What is it about the south of France?” asks Martin. “I understand why people have been coming here since the 19th century – or even earlier. There’s a softness to the light and the landscape is beautiful. When I first came to Cannes in the 1990s, it was the place to watch and to be seen. It’s different today but there’s still [an appeal], whether you are just sitting at a café sipping an Aperol spritz or at one of the exclusive beach clubs on the Croisette.”
References to the 1920s also encourage the wearer to look back and reflect – something that the slower months of summer call for. “This was a really interesting period: the computer, the telephone and the radio were all rapidly evolving during that time,” says Martin. “It was also a period of social freedom, with women really starting to express themselves. Yet there were also these dark political forces on the horizon and a desire to return to ‘traditional values’. We now find ourselves in a very similar period. But you have to maintain a sense of joy and optimism, no matter how bleak everything seems.”
You can do that by taking cues from Martin and immersing yourself in the romance of summer and its playful dress codes. “Glamour is romance and I’m a secret romantic – I believe in joy, connection and beauty,” she says. “Getting dressed and creating a character for yourself every morning is a primal human urge. We were decorating ourselves before we painted cave walls.”
You can listen to the full conversation, recorded live in Cannes, on Monocle on Fashion below.
