It is time, once again, for a conversation about men’s pants.
And Prada is guiding that conversation. At its latest men’s runway show held here on Sunday, models wore trousers in one form and one form only: calf-tight. They were shrunken, squelched, suppressed. These pants were so narrow that they hugged the tops of the models’ cowboy boots, giving the illusion of a conjoined pant-boot mutation.
As one showgoer put it on the way out, “Those were some skinny pants.”
The shock of the shrunken pants hit particularly hard because the look was such a departure from what nearly all of the audience wore. Embodying the billowy tastes of the day, many editors and celebrities were dressed in pants spanning straight to supersize. (I, for transparency, was wearing jeans nearly double the size of anything the models trooped out in.)
Backstage after the show, Raf Simons, one half of the creative team that designs Prada, stressed that he and Miuccia Prada were not making any strident declarations. The slim silhouette, a resounding echo of men’s fashion of the 2000s, simply felt right for this particular collection.
“We try to not really dictate something or make a theory,” said Mr. Simons, who himself was in some free-fitting pants.
Still, by the time I had departed the show, several friends (notably, those who tend to wear blousy pleated pants) had texted me about those taut trousers. Pants anxiety was on.
Whether the Prada pair can turn back the tide toward tight pants is to be seen — and seems, frankly, unlikely. Mr. Simons is onto something about the role of designers today: They don’t really have the authority to dictate broad trends anymore.
And so, startling though those tight pants were, it’s perhaps best to see past them to what was otherwise a vigorous Prada offering with much to chew on.
“We do not want to limit ourselves,” Mr. Simons said after the show, which saw the models traipse along a precipitous multitiered runway constructed out of scaffolding.
The collection, as the designers noted backstage, had a cinematic air, though Mr. Simons was reluctant to name any specific films that they had been inspired by. It was, he said, “up to the audience” to make their own assumptions.
OK, I’ll give it a try. This audience member perceived “McCabe & Mrs. Miller” in the confident overcoats with rough-edged fur collars, and “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town” in a sly pajama suit (literally, a pair of pajamas cut similarly to a suit). Parkas with face-cloaking, oversize hoods called to mind none other than Kenny McCormick of “South Park.”
There was also some “My Own Private Idaho” beaming through in tartan robe coats and sofa-soft leather blazers, which could have been resurrected from a thrift shop. Indeed, much of the collection had a pre-loved feel, particularly cowboy boots with curled-up toes that looked as if they had a few hundred miles on them already.
Between the tight pants, baby-doll T-shirts and bare-chested models, this was also, conspicuously, the sexiest Prada men’s display in recent memory. As Mrs. Prada reflected after the show (which was occurring one day before Donald Trump’s inauguration in the United States), “the world is becoming so conservative” and, with the A.I. revolution at full-bore, is, perhaps, losing a piece of its humanity.
The collection, she said, “was about romance — inspiring, liberating instinct.” And perhaps making you rethink the pants you’re wearing.