Fashion is theater for the politically-conscious aesthete. Selvedge denim jeans or an artfully worn-in bomber are signals of a kind of relaxed intellectual freedom, akin to Americans smoking cigarettes because they “don’t count in Europe.” Bologna is the red city, meaning the standard 18 to 20-something-year-old walks the streets in their own flavor of proletariat drag. This is most accurately explained as a type of grunge reminiscent of graffiti sprayed across a 16th-century portico.
Fashion cannot be divorced from politics. For Italy, the images and aesthetics of fascism shaped the integration of its logics into the general populus, and then its subsequent regurgitation. We look at clothing to discover who creates tradition. Are there more than arbitrary understandings of taste that dictate the ordinary, the natural?
To study these influences, I look towards Prada as a representative of Italy’s answer to haute couture. Fratelli Prada opened as a small leather-goods shop in Milan in 1913, with Mario Prada and his brother Martino as the original founders. Miuccia Prada, the youngest granddaughter of Mario, inherited the brand in the 1970s and transformed the business into the luxury fashion house as it is now known. Miuccia studied political science at the University of Milan, receiving her PhD in 1978. As a student, she was active in the Italian Communist Party and women’s rights movements. Her familial moniker, Miu Miu, became the name of Prada’s subsidiary brand in 1992.
Miuccia’s first collection as head designer of Prada was the Fall/Winter 1988 runway. She received criticism for including a few military-style garments in the debut, evoking an impression of the Camicie Nere (Black Shirts), the paramilitary wing of the Italian National Fascist Party from the 1920s to the end of WWII. Understandably, the public associates certain images with the violence and destruction that they experienced at the hands of Benito Mussolini’s regime, and therefore desire to push those images away.
However, I argue that these garments were used as a subversion of feminine fashion ideals, layered with a uniquely Italian political history. Under Mussolini, women’s fashion in Italy was restricted starting in the 1930s. Through l’Ente Nazionale della Moda (The National Fashion Body), officials were tasked with the Italianization of women’s wardrobes. This included the development of the country’s new look, heavily inspired by the traditional clothing of rural women.
Textiles were products of national pride, meaning the country banned French imports for fabrics and finishings. Their aim was to cut off the influence of haute couture on the nation, producing an exclusively Italian national image. Through women’s groups, like the Massaie Rurali (Rural Housewives), fashion was policed and thus distilled to a supposedly pure essence.
But what is this essence if not a project of revolution? This shift is both trying to change the country with a new aesthetic ethos, yet turning to ubiquitous symbols of “tradition” for Italian fashion. I relish in this discord. The fascist aesthetic ideal is the product of an entirely new dream, an entirely new ambition. This is the manifest hypocrisy that lies at the center of the fascist project.
Prada under Miuccia was known for the “ugly chic,” creating a new look for the female intellectual using challenging combinations of color, shape, and texture. She put women in garments that represented a masculine and dominating ideal, the same garments that once were symbols of their oppression. The military jacket from her 1988 collection was just the beginning of her using the brand to define a subversive Italian womanhood.
Miu Miu, Prada’s quirky younger sister, carries this legacy through their annual Literary Club. The theme of 2026 was “Politics of Desire,” inviting participants to sit for lectures and discuss works from authors and academics like Annie Ernaux, Ama Ata Aidoo, and Olga Goriunova.
Fashion is a cycle of weaving and piecing together your representation, creating a facade of thousands of years of symbols. Haute couture is intrinsically capitalist, but can also be seen as a tool for the creation of potent messages. Sure, to sell a $1000 t-shirt is an affront to God and the working class. Nevertheless, runway fashion is not completely devoid of meaning for humankind. Herein lies the nuance that we all must face when we open our closets in the morning.
To quote The Devil Wears Prada, “…that blue represents millions of dollars of countless jobs, and it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you’re wearing a sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room from a pile of stuff.”