This week on HERO, we’re bringing you Fashion Week Takeaways, everything you need to know about SS14 menswear in our definitive take on the season…

PRADA IS MINDBLOWINGLY AWESOME

Weeks after Spring Summer 14 menswear, we are on level 3 temperature warning in London – just what does that even mean? – and Calippos, Twisters and Fabs have become the new UK diet, solid food a distant memory.

In what felt a premonition of our current restlessness, Miuccia Prada brought stifling heat to her runway, with a collection more romantically built from the stormy exotic, set to a high-rise backdrop of sunset and military helicopter graphics by AMO. Mixing Hawaii and Vietnam in a contemporary way, with tousled hair and moist skin, brain-bashingly covetable clothes were not the only reason Prada is our best of SS14. The collection’s sense of cinema – not the first time the word has been brought up by this label – instilled emotion.

An easy exercise in pale colours and lightweight tailoring this was not, evoking the uncompromising nature of an Autumn Winter season, where designers run riot with layering and concept without the #1 preoccupation of needing to keep their client (literally) cool. Considering when you break it up this is an optimal summer wardrobe, albeit twisted, that is no mean feat.

1940s-leaning Hawaiian florals and prints were reinterpreted in strange colour combinations; cotton, the main fabric, teamed with wools, kid mohair and languid viscose. The first looks fragmented the suit by pairing different colour jackets with trousers; later blousons with contrasting sleeves featured Pin Up motifs, computer processed, stencilled then heat sealed.

It was twelve looks of womenswear that instigated a chemistry of passion. Sent out three in succession at times, the girls were calling the shots. To prove a point, their clothes were not scaled down versions of menswear but instead a standalone collection of embellished hybrid dresses.

Don’t miss our other new season takeaways. Be informed with Show Business: Runways Go Hard; Sports Direct: Track Suits Tailoring; Agenda-Setting Collection: Saint Laurent; Hair Today: The Christopher Shannon Effect; Been Caught Stealing: Girls Take Boys’; The Best Looks of SS14.