Prada puts skirts center stage at Milan Fashion Week

MILAN (AP) — The Prada model grips her full, pleated skirt, forming a rosette at the unfinished waist in a gesture that evokes feminine beauty with a subversive twist.

Co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons kept the focus of their Spring Summer 2027 collection firmly “waist down," in reference to a two-decade-old traveling Prada exhibition that examined the role in contemporary wardrobes of one of mankind's oldest garments.

For practicality and creativity, nothing surpasses the skirt, according to Prada, who favors skirts in her own wardrobe, including a pink silk one she wore for a backstage preview before the runway show that opened Milan Fashion Week on Tuesday.

“If you want to have a normal life, go wherever you want. It’s easy to camouflage even a beautiful skirt,’’ she said. “You need to camouflage the beauty so that you can live with people.”

The creative directors’ decision to keep trousers and dresses out of this collection was inspired by an old video interview of Prada likening the skirt to a T-shirt for men, in which she said “the place where she can put all her ideas,” Simons said.

From the swath of material that ancient man wrapped around the waist, Prada used a rectangular piece of material as the collection’s starting point, which Prada said became the framework for creativity.

Flipping runway convention that often focuses on the female bodice, black tops in varying styles offered a blank canvas against which to admire the first cluster of skirts: Slit numbers closed with industrial velcro to allow adjustable slits, feminine pleats, short satiny numbers in naïve prints and sheer crinoline overlays on crumpled silken skirts with flattened ruffles.

Bralettes, bandeaus and bustiers, tiny as they were, offered another forum for expression, including scoop-neck bralettes, bandeaus that link to arm bands and bustiers worn unhooked over homely knitwear.

Footwear ranged from silken slingbacks to industrial perforated leather pumps.

The collection didn’t propose full looks as much as it offered building blocks for self-expression.

“I think you can express complexity,” Prada said. “Everything is so complex, how can you be just one thing? When you express yourself, it is not that you are feminine, sexy, masculine, you are so many things together."

A model wears a creation part of the Prada women's Spring-Summer 2027 collection presented in Milan, Italy, Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno).

A model wears a creation part of the Prada women's Spring-Summer 2027 collection presented in Milan, Italy, Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno).

A model wears a creation part of the Prada women's Spring-Summer 2027 collection presented in Milan, Italy, Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno).

A model wears a creation part of the Prada women's Spring-Summer 2027 collection presented in Milan, Italy, Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno).

Models wear creations part of the Prada women's Spring-Summer 2027 collection presented in Milan, Italy, Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno).

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, is set to make a rare appearance Wednesday on the world stage when he speaks at the U.N. General Assembly in what is likely the first time a foreign leader addresses the world body while their country is at war with the host nation.

Arriving in New York under heavy security and scrutiny, Pezeshkian — who, within Iran’s political landscape, is considered a moderate politician — will address world leaders a day after U.S. President Donald Trump used the same stage to suggest he may “annihilate” the Islamic Republic if a deal isn’t reached soon to end the nearly seven-month war.

Hours later, Trump told reporters that his chief envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, met for about three hours with the Iranian officials on the sidelines of the annual gathering. But he offered few details about how the discussions transpired or the substance of the exchange.

“It was a very good meeting,” Trump said. The president later added that the Iranian officials were “not the highest level, but it’s something.” Also on Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Trump is open to meeting with Pezeshkian while he’s in New York.

But Tehran downplayed Tuesday's unscheduled exchange, which were the first indirect talks between U.S. and Iranian officials since a June ceasefire unraveled. Esmail Baghaei, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, maintained the country's negotiating position in talks with U.S. officials, demanding that Washington end its blockade of Iranian ports and release frozen Iranian assets,

Baghaei said the talks — conducted indirectly through Qatari mediators — were “not anything new.”

Pezeshkian will have the chance to elaborate on where Tehran stands as more than a year of start-stop negotiations between the two longtime adversaries have failed to produce a sustainable solution. His speech comes as intermittent attacks continued in the Strait of Hormuz off Iran’s coast, where commercial shipping remained below prewar levels.

His address last year came months after the 12-day Israel-Iran war that saw the assassination of many of the Islamic Republic’s highest military and political leaders and once again broke down weeks of negotiations with the United States.

“Ladies and gentlemen, you all bore witness that this past June, my country was subjected to a savage aggression and flagrant contravention of the most elementary principles of international law,” Pezeshkian said at the time.

The front pages of Iranian newspapers show portraits of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, and headlines regarding the Shajareh Tayyebeh school that was hit in a Feb. 28 U.S. airstrike in Minab, at a square in northern Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

In this photo released by the Iranian Presidency Office, President Masoud Pezeshkian waves to media and officials as he boards his plane while leaving Mehrabad airport for New York to attend the UN General Assembly, in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2026. (Iranian Presidency Office via AP)