Prada embraces chaos on the Spring/Summer 2025 runway in Milan

In an ALGORITHMIC world, how do you embrace your true self; your true style? Is it possible? We are so wedded to the algorithms that dictate our daily lives that it is often hard to see the forest for the trees—or the true state of fashion amidst the myriad of microtrends that emerge every few weeks.

It’s hard to tell whether we serve the algorithm or it serves us. Do we create trends that the algorithm analyzes and promotes, or are we unconsciously guided by the algorithm itself? When you’re so deep in it, how on earth do you break free?

For Prada the answer is simple: chaos.

For their spring/summer 2025 collection, presented during Milan Fashion Week, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons referenced the extremes of the internet and the infinite number of threads of contemporary fashion, creating a collection united by eclectic unpredictability.

“We live in an age of extreme information, immersed in a constant stream of content. Our consumption of the infinite panorama offered by the Internet is driven by algorithms, finite sequences of instructions that limit decidability through logic in a fundamentally illogical world,” we read in the program notes. “If this interpretation assumes an architecture of understanding, humanity, by contrast, may be defined by its unpredictability, its rejection of the derivative and the expected.”

From the get-go, Prada and Simons abandoned the derivative and waited by the door. The first two looks on the runway were starkly at odds with each other: a delicate, airy floral sundress, its straps hanging off the model’s shoulders, paired with studded black leather Mary Janes; then a cloudy black shift dress covered in hoop earrings, worn with sensible white loafers. Cottagecore immediately clashes with office siren (or is that some kind of BDSM-core?), and from there, it’s a joyful embrace of unpredictability.

A neat little knit top and pants are inexplicably paired with a strange headpiece that’s somewhere between a WWI gas mask and a visor; a butter-yellow dress is styled with insect-like sunglasses and spiked, leaf-like heels. BDSM-style belts and harnesses accompany otherwise chaste outfits; a business shirt meets a pair of thick gray stockings. Twice a beautifully detailed, intricate dress—one feathered, the other embellished—is topped with a brightly colored windbreaker; gorpcore meets maximalism. There are cowboy boots paired with ’60s-style coats and tailored pants tucked into wellies.

Almost every model wears a completely different style of footwear — there are low heels, loafers, sandals, Wellington boots, Mary Janes, ballet flats, slingbacks, platform sneakers — each pair is a surprise.

Collars, belts, and even hems freeze in midair; suspended as if carried by the wind, they fall through time and land on the runway.

“There is a multiplicity of Prada, elements from different eras coexisting simultaneously to challenge any theory of chronology, creating impossible contradictions, points of difference,” the show notes continue. “Infinite options offer infinite possibilities. Chance is presented as an expression of free will, something unexpected, possible only through human intervention, invention and choice, something that cannot be repeated.”

In this algorithmic world, Prada proposes that there is nothing more human than unpredictable chaos, and that by accepting it, we are liberated. In discord there is harmony.

Related: The biggest trends from London Fashion Week SS25