Prada Took Its Spring 2022 Men’s Show to the Beach With Short Shorts, Bucket Hats and an Unexpected Summer Shoe

Travel and vacation are on the brain — and Prada knows it.

The Italian fashion brand showed its spring ’22 men’s collection on Sunday for Milan Men’s Fashion Week, just as summer travel begins to ramp up and Covid restrictions begin to loosen.

Sure enough, the show was set on the beach — at least partially. The show started inside a red lacquered corridor, where models walked through a somewhat disorienting maze of a runway, fluorescent lights overhead illuminating looks that included a juxtaposition of suit jackets and short swim-like shorts, black socks and boots or chunky brogues with bucket hats.

At the end of the maze was the ocean, where models stepped out of the square red corridor and put their big black boots in the hot sand. Swim shorts, sport details, sunglasses and bucket hats finally found their purpose.

Co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons had very specific suggestions for what to wear for spring/summer 2022 (and the looks will no doubt provide inspiration for this summer, when people are especially thirsty for fashion):  The printed short, rolled up the thigh or even done in a swim-like brief/hot pant. The once-shunned summer black sock, a former fashion faux-pas turned on its head. The ubiquity of the black boot, even in high summer. The nylon bucket hat, already a menswear trend and something of a collector’s item from the brand, a must-have both in fashion and actual sun protection.

Aside from highlighting these perennial objects of summer — and adding even more wanderlust to the current collective mindset — the collection continued the conversation on a new, more feminine and gender-neutral aesthetic that is already a clear thread at Milan Men’s Fashion Week this season.