Meanwhile, Prada’s 63 skirts made a subtle nod to one of its own traveling exhibitions from the early 2000s, titled “Waist Down.” “We used the skirt as a framework for different ideas, different approaches, like a raw material to express concepts,” said Miuccia Prada in the show notes. “The limitation of its simple shape, almost like a canvas, can force ideas, make you reinvent the form within its strict confines.” The skirts’ gradient dyed leather was rather reminiscent of the emotionally charged works of Mark Rothko.

Photo: Alessandro Lucioni / Gorunway.com

“Art teaches clothing how to transcend its necessity,” says Anne Higonnet, art historian and professor at Barnard. “Every day, people out there are using color, shape, texture, composition, and rhythm to go beyond covering our vulnerable, knobby, oozing, mobile anatomies, beyond even expressing our position in society.” If you’re going to wear it, you might as well know the reference, too.