Simply Abu Dhabi XX

2 1 3 S I M P LY A B U DH A B I solitary red and blue check coat that seemed like an inside joke. “No one wanted to put it in the show but I said I like to do some mistakes,” Prada said with a little laugh. The flat-packed, heavily-shod, almost-all- nylon collections she showed for him and her this season were, literally, cut from the same cloth. There was tailoring, in slate grey mohairs, multiply buttoned, everything as flat and boxy and clean as the rectilinear clutches the models grasped at. A plethora of matte and shiny fabrics were used to give these clinical, minimal nylon designs more definition. But seeing as Prada put some of the women in pieces that could just as easily come from a man's wardrobe, there was a sense that it was almost impossible to spot where the menswear ended and the womenswear began – and vice versa. This was exactly what Prada wanted to accomplish with this collection. And as far as that goes, it was an unmitigated success. She claimed that blending collections for men and women was something she'd been waiting to do for a while, because working on menswear always left her wondering how she could apply the same ideas to women. The shared aesthetic today was simple. "Uniform, severe, elegant: this is the fashion I like at this moment." You can’t help but wonder, however, when reading Prada’s manifesto about gender whether the designer is just talking about nylon, or rather a whole way of looking at fashion – as a bigger picture, applicable tomen and women. Both co-existing, both equal.