Prada Takes on Fashion’s Algorithm Echo Chamber

The corrosive effects of our online lives have been pretty front and center recently. So it shouldn’t be a surprise, really, that the subject has reached the runways. Or that it was Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons who took it on most directly in their Prada show.

“Anything we like, we know it’s because other people” — the ones whose content has been served up by a form of code in our social feeds — “are instilling it into us,” Mrs. Prada said backstage as a host of reporters thrust their (ahem) smartphones, the instruments of the problem, in the designers’ faces. She and Mr. Simons smiled a little resignedly.

They were talking about the echo chambers created by online algorithms. Suggesting the resulting alternate realities don’t just warp our politics, establishing a self-perpetuating loop in which we are constantly shown only those things already identified as triggers for more viewing — they warp our wardrobes, too. Hence the proliferation of micro trend after micro trend: the avalanche of “cores” currently dominating shopping sites everywhere (tenniscore, balletcore, dadcore, you-name-it-core).

But what if that wasn’t the case? What if auto-generated style were replaced by original style? What would that look like?

Mrs. Prada and Mr. Simons had an idea. Actually, 49 of them, for 49 different moods or selves.

Maybe, for example, it would look like a metallic leather road-warrior miniskirt under a very polite little faux-fur-collared tweed jacket, because manners are important, but so is an exit strategy. Maybe it would look like a butter yellow strapless ’60s evening gown paired with ginormous buglike sci-fi sunglasses, because the mood was Maria Callas about to sing an aria on Mars.