Emma Roberts is a 32-year-old American actress from Rhinebeck, New York. But yesterday, hours before Prada unveiled its exquisite fall 2023 collection, she did something only a certain small, eternally chic 73-year-old Italian woman from Milan would do. Roberts took one look at her perfectly pretty and blue strapless Prada dress and decided to mess it all up with an oversized khaki jacket, featuring the brand’s triangle logo knit in gray on the back of her collar.
“When we put the outfit together, we thought, well, it’s so sweet and so beautiful…but let’s make it more me,” the actress told me over the phone after the show. “So I threw this oversized Prada jacket over it and that made the look!”
It’s the kind of thing so many of us have done in our lives with a deep sigh (to the delight of our mothers who insist we’ll be too cold in just our going out clothes), and that Miuccia Prada does with a glimmer in her eye. It’s painfully Prada, a little strange in a way that makes all the sense and also no sense at all. But that is the Prada woman. You pass her on the street and she’s wearing funny gold heels and a slinky dress and then a dowdy layer that’s secretly fabulous because it just shows she’s living a life not for the photos but for herself. And as a result people can’t help but take photos of her, only to realize her essence is more something you experience than capture.
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Roberts’s favorite part of the show was that same sensibility of pretty pragmatism, which was at the core of the Fall 2023 collection she saw come down the runway. “I loved all of those great floral looks, worn with masculine blazers,” she said. “I love the juxtaposition of feminine and masculine. I thought it was so special.”
Her favorite part of the show though was the final look, a long black jacket with pockets that hit right below the chest; the model’s outfit was completely hidden underneath, with only the skin of her legs and the sharp point of her red heels visible. “I love how the show ended and it didn’t end with some grand looks. It just ended with a very Prada look. That was so chic.”
When Roberts hears the word “Prada,” she thinks: “elegant but wearable.” She told me that to her, the brand “feels so special and high-end but you can wear it in your everyday life and I think that’s such a hard thing to do. And Prada does it so well.”
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And Roberts has been wearing Prada in her everyday for years now. Prada is actually what made her feel like she had finally come into her own as a child. “When I was younger, all the cool girls had the Prada nylon. And so when I got the Prada nylon backpack, I was like, ‘I’ve arrived!’”
And now, at 32, it feels like Roberts has arrived all over again. Not at womanhood but specifically at Prada womanhood, a zooty milestone defined by the urge to wear a khaki jacket slung around your shoulders like a boa—and making it look unthinkably glamorous.
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This article originally appeared on Harper’s BAZAAR US.
