The ability to exchange stories makes us human. We live in a jumble of overlapping narratives, some deep and sustaining, others fragmentary, truncated, partially realized or incomplete. If storytelling is the root of all communication, the manner in which we choose to tell them – abstract and complex or simple and direct – is significant. A fashion show is a story told in an architectural space: a story in a story. For the S/S2018 Prada Men’s Show, however, the architectural installation has been erased and the extant structural elements of the building outlined to create frames for seemingly-simple yet evocative picture stories. Following the logic of comic strips and graphic novels, fragments of incomplete narratives cover all the visible surfaces, the black-edged architectural features providing the infrastructure for the storytelling. Even the guests are drawn into the narrative, embedded in sunken frames, as models parade on an illustrated surface weaving between the spectator boxes. The show will be broadcast live on prada.com (and on InstagramLive), and so inject its story into countless other far-flung lives through ubiquitous digital frames linked by global social networks: a story in a story in a story.

Credits: AMO and 2x4