When putting on a show, fashion brands can't really get away with the bare minimum anymore. Not really. Heaven forbid sending down a few models in good clothes to some techno from a COOL DJ. That'd be far too pedestrian. There's reason to go big, too. After fashion week was placed on ice by the pandemic (epidemic? Eternal plague?), the usual pundits and pretty faces were starved of their biggest and best opportunity to hobnob and Instagloat. So, despite digital shows that were, actually, very good, all things considered, and much lower in CO2 emissions, fashion week had to come back with a bang. And bang it did at Prada, who closed Milan Fashion Week and its autumn/winter 2023 collection with an appearance by Jeff Goldblum.

jeff goldblum prada
Daniele Venturelli

Not smiley, dinosaur-fighting, jazz finger snapping Goldblum, but moody, skulking, Street Fighter secret character Goldblum; a Goldblum that is rarely seen in public, or indeed at the pictures. Wearing a mob boss overcoat in pitch black with armbands and a thick hem of fleece (verrrrrrry Prada), the 69-year-old entered his final form. You don't fuck around with this Goldblum. You don't ask him for favours. You don't ask him for anything, frankly, least of all where he got his fancy new coat from.

Goldblum's transmogrification from Kind Fun Man into Mean Fashion Man was part of the show's overarching theme. From the brand's control room, creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons took "theatre and cinema as mirrors of reality", according to the show notes, which created a world in which "everyday reality is valorized". That gave way to more overcoats, lots of black, big shouldered trench coats in patent leather, and a procession of actors specifically chosen thanks to their full time job of "bring[ing] a new facet of reality". The Queen's Gambit's Thomas Brodie-Sangster was there, as was Kyle McLachlan, Sex Education's Asa Butterfield and Black Mirror's Damson Idris.

The Internet, as expected (and likely as planned by the top brass at Prada), went mad. Goldblum was there, in Milan, in good clothes, and things started to feel a bit more normal again. Fashion shows are showing off once more.