Prada does steampunk

Part of our focus on steampunk initiated in the SPRING FLING edition of VISI, we asked our editor-at-large, fashion blogger Malibongwe Tyilo to tell us about the recent Prada steampunk range.

In the fashion world, Prada went deep into the steampunk trend for their fall/winter 2012 menswear campaign. Shot by David Sims, the campaign features well-known tough guys and sometimes sci-fi actors, Gary Oldman, Jamie Bell, Garrett Hedlund and Willem Dafoe, with death-defying stares.

They all look super sleek and macho in neo-Victorian designer swag. However, the steampunk-inspired range does not simply rip-off all things 19th-century, it interprets them into a modern style. The lines are cleaner, and most of the outfits are two-tone bringing through a more modern “Mad Men” fashion sensibility.

Recently, the range inspired award-winning Rotterdam-based design, architecture and culture agency OMA AMO, to create a lo-tech look retro-futuristic video “set within a dystopian society of machines and jagged geometrics” as part of the official Prada campaign. Although not overtly steampunk, the video also depends heavily on the steampunk notion of an alternate future as it might have been imagined in times past.

This fascination with macho styling makes complete sense right now, since after every huge trend, fashion loves to try out the polar opposite – almost as a way to atone for fashion sins committed in the name of a bygone trend. The fashion world spent the Noughties experimenting with a more feminised male fashion identity – the metrosexual, the sensitive new age guy, skirts for men, etc. Now it is searching for a new man; the tough guy, the macho man, the man’s man and the steampunk man is that man, for the moment.

Malibongwe “Mali” Tyilo is VISI’s ubiquitous editor-at-large, to be seen at all the fashionable openings snapping away for Skattie What Are You Wearing. Follow him on Twitter @skattie_what.

See our full steampunk report here. 

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More from the SPRING FLING edition of VISI

• New and second-cycle
  Renovation and interior design is seldom a stagnant, once-off affair. The best spaces grow into themselves. See the before pictures of the houses featured in the magazine.

• Deft blue strokes
  Fabric, surfboards, shacks… Something is afoot, and not just in South Africa! From Babylonstoren to Russia, browse our full Delft trend report.

• Popcorn architecture
  We have inspiration from the Architecture ZA 2012 Biennial Festival to share. Watch our online film festival and read our report back. 

• Mechanical futurism
  Some say steampunk is what happened when Goths discovered brown. Others say it grew out of a literary genre. Explore our steampunk trend report.

• Joburg Art Attack
  For at least one week in September, Joburg was hit by an art attack. Read the post-mortem and our guide to starting an art collection, written by the experts. 

• Winning wishes
  In October, Warren Lewis will be giving away four paintings. Up for grabs over October and November is a Bodum Bistro Coffee Maker from Banks Kitchen Boutique. Enter the competitions here.