The world has turned itself upside down, which, to be fair, suits it rather well, and Prada’s show last Thursday made no attempt to set it straight. Why correct the era when one can simply dress it? Backstage, the chaos possessed all the refinement of a society uprising. Journalists, usually so eager to dissect a hemline, were filming the scene as though documenting civil unrest, fearing that a shove in “the Situation” might escalate into Greek tragedy.

Contemporary chic, it seems, lies in surviving fashion. The collection itself cultivated disorder with the precision of a slightly ironic Swiss watchmaker. The garments appeared tattered, frayed, fatigued by lives they had quite obviously never lived. Deliberately soiled, layered with studied nonchalance, they gave the impression that elegance had wandered through a storm and decided to take up residence there. Fifteen models crossed the vast carpeted space at a pace brisk enough to leave time itself breathless.

Three passes, like a mildly anxious waltz. With each return, layers were added or removed, a reverse striptease for puritan aesthetes. A flared skirt suddenly revealed itself to be a 1950s-inspired dress, as though Miuccia Prada had been in intimate conversation with a postwar housewife. Beneath a sharply tailored black trouser suit lurked a cotton boxer short and a grey sweater, irrefutable proof that respectability has always relied on comfortable lining.

The silhouettes and materials echoed the autumn winter menswear shows, summoning tubular coat-dresses of monastic severity, crumpled shirts with ostentatiously drooping French cuffs worn like military decorations, trench coats whose seams peeled back to reveal plaid wool beneath, as if the garment were confessing under polite interrogation.

Small utilitarian capes in vivid cotton were adorned with vertical bands of animal print down attached to the button plackets with the conviction of a manifesto. And then there is Raf Simons. Some call him a visionary. Others, with more lyrical inclinations, murmur “Si Monster.” I would not presume to decide. Let us merely observe that when he unravels a seam, the entire world appears to lose a thread.

FM