On Thursday night, Prada commenced New York Fashion Week and celebrated its Spring Summer 2025 campaign in Soho. Around 7 p.m., the city’s glittering set poured into the Prada Epicenter from a slush-covered Broadway.
The massive store once served as the Guggenheim’s downtown hub before being redesigned by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, who would later create the Fondazione Prada in Milan. When the boutique opened in 2001, “The Wave,” a sweeping space carved from the ground floor and extending into the basement, set a new standard for the possibilities of a fashion flagship. Over two decades later, the Epicenter remains awe-inspiring.
Handsome servers, holding silver trays of Champagne flutes and lychee cocktails, lined the descending steps. At the base, beautifully bound, hard-cover versions of the campaign, entitled “Ten Protagonists,” awaited attendees.
Conceived and directed by Ferdinando Verderi, “Ten Protagonists” is a collaboration between author Ottessa Moshfegh, actress Carey Mulligan, and photographer Steven Meisel. Moshfegh wrote a first-person character sketch for each of Mulligan’s looks. In addition to the clothes (designed, of course, by Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons), hair styling by Guido Palau and makeup by Pat McGrath transformed Mulligan. These characters include Cecily, an obsessive understudy in a pink trench, and Eleanor, an ambitious art advisor in a polka-dot skirt
“This was a fantasy project,” Moshfegh said. “Each woman was a unique character. It was about individuality and walking into the future in a look of one’s own.”
Moshfegh has long maintained a close relationship with fashion. In 2022, the author walked the runway for Maryam Nassir Zadeh, and in 2023, she wrote show notes for Proenza Schouler. Her fiction, for all its hallmark perversity, often finds glamor in unlikely figures: the beautiful, insane narrator of My Year of Rest and Relaxation; Rebecca, a devious director of education, in Eileen; the aspiring actors, beach-dwelling prostitutes, and drug-addled club rats that haunt the stories in Homesick for Another World.
“It’s about the presentation of self,” Moshfegh said, when asked about her attraction to fashion. “It’s about beauty, personality, and character. I’m obsessed with clothes.”
When asked if she would set a novel in the industry, Moshfegh laughed. “I would have to do much more research. A fashion designer has to be more thoughtful than any other art form. Clients, business, keeping up the time.”
Around Moshfegh, there was plenty to draw inspiration from, with a guest list as colorful and eclectic as the collection itself.
Ever the iconoclast, Cindy Sherman carried a fur bag and wore rubber boats with her dark suit. Christopher Briney, the breakout star of last year’s Mean Girls remake, wore a leather coat and hoodie. In her leopard print coat and black bustier, Chloe East, an Orange County native, oozed the sophistication of an Italian movie star. Sarah Hoover, author of the acclaimed memoir The Motherload, admired Koolhaas’s daring. Olivia Ponton, who stunned in a white shirt and black necktie, joked that she had to wear her hair down or else she would be confused for a waiter.
Prada, season after season, finds new ways to inspire.
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