The house’s menswear show drew on youthful spirit, while Fendi got ready to mark 100 years with a new crest

They have been been ridiculed as snowflakes and “too woke” by some, but Prada’s co-creative designers think gen Z are a generation to be celebrated.

Speaking backstage after their latest menswear show, which took place on Sunday afternoon at the Prada Foundation in Milan, Miuccia Prada said: “Youth is the future. It is hope. We wanted to do something that would express youthful optimism because the times are so bad.”

Fashion label has taken items you might already own – a white vest, a backpack – to its menswear show

No one comes to Milan fashion week for its “useful clothes”. Yet this was the verdict of the director Luca Guadagnino, who sat in the front row on Sunday’s menswear show: “Useful, yes, wearable, yes, all those things. Everyone can wear this.”

Price tags aside, his point was this: just as in previous collections, Prada took things you might already own – a ribbed white vest, a backpack – and turned them into must-have pieces. They did the same with duffle coats, donkey jackets, black office brogues and navy parkas. Sometimes fashion holds up a mirror to what’s happening in the world, but sometimes it reminds us of what we already own.

Collaboration between Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons, only the second for the designers, includes gloves and comfort-wear

At a time when the relevance of high fashion is being questioned, Prada’s menswear show in Milan addressed the criticism with an unusually practical item of clothing: a pair of long johns.

Speaking after an audience-free show at a largely virtual Milan fashion week, Raf Simons and Miuccia Prada, co-creative directors of the brand, described the item as symbolic of the current situation. Worn by every model, and intended as a second skin, they were inspired as much by pyjamas and babies as wetsuits and “rockers”, though Simons was quick to add: “We didn’t want it to look like activewear.”