Seaside Bureaucrats: Prada SS26 Men’s at Milan Fashion Week

What if your out-of-office reply wore linen? At Prada SS26, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons orchestrated a vision of summer that’s equal parts boardroom and beachfront—like slipping into swim trunks but still CC’ing the CEO.

The runway read like a vacation memo drafted under duress. Rubber flip-flops, loafers missing their toes, and dad-coded shorts cut so short they bordered on confrontation. Gone were the sneakers, gone was the noise. In their place: calm, considered chaos. Straw hats loomed overhead like personal sunshields or bureaucratic halos. Their scale was almost comic—until they weren’t.

The color story whispered: eggshell, oatmilk, sea haze. But beneath the breezy tones was something more intentional. Every look obeyed a structure: collars pressed, cuffs exaggerated, silhouettes razor-clean. Even when the shirts felt sheer or the trousers nearly missing, the styling was surgical.

You got the sense that something was off—but by design. Tailored coats topped bare torsos. Swimwear merged with outerwear. The soundtrack, humming with vague dread, only amplified the collection’s emotional weather: leisure with a looming deadline.

And then, the hat again. Frayed, defiant, fragile. A metaphor disguised as an accessory. Prada didn’t offer resolution, but a kind of stylish in-between. Not escape, not confrontation—just elegance under pressure.

SS26 wasn’t nostalgic or futuristic. It was lucid. A meditation on how we show up—even when we’d rather drift. In a season asking for direction, Prada simply answered with a shrug, a sandal, and a perfectly proportioned pinstripe.

Out of office, but still making decisions.

Welcome to Prada’s summer. Hope you remembered to turn your out-of-office on.