Fashion

GLOBAL INVESTOR 1.16 — 56
TEXT BY JULIA REA
For Prada, the conceptual has always lain
at the heart of both its philosophy and its
design aesthetic. Adopting an intellectual
approach to design and presentation, the
label’s designer Miuccia Prada born 1949 has subsequently
transformed her family’s Milanese luxury
leather goods company into a powerful and influential
global fashion brand. Steering away from the
conventional ideas of surface beauty favored by her
contemporaries, Prada draws upon her interests in
art, film and wider culture to produce an intelligent
and multifaceted vision of femininity.
The Prada company began life as a luxury luggage
business founded by Miuccia’s grandfather
Mario Prada in 1913, where it was based in the exclusive
Milanese shopping establishment Galleria
Vittorio Emanuele II, favored by the Italian aristocracy.
The company was granted the title of “Official
Supplier to the Italian Royal Household” in 1919,
thus authorizing the use of the House of Savoy coat
of arms and knotted rope motif that has endured
as the company’s trademark logo.
Initially reluctant to become involved with the
family business, which had been taken over by her
mother Luisa upon Mario’s death in 1958, Prada
Miuccia Prada has consistently shunned conventional
notions of surface beauty, infusing her designs with an
intellectual and multifaceted vision of femininity.
obtained a doctorate in
political science from the
University of Milan before
training as a mime artist.
Her love of fashion has little
to do with her design
heritage but, instead, was
focused around constructing
and experimenting with
a sense of individual identity
out of the clothes she
wore herself. As she explained
to The Independent
in 2015, “It started at
a very personal point …
I always accepted my love
for clothes, but I didn’t
want to enter into the fashion
business.”
Despite this lack of any
clear business aspirations,
Miuccia came to the helm
of the Prada company in
1978, seeking to modernize
and reimagine its aesthet ic
while, simultaneously, disregarding current design
trends. In fact, Prada does not simply desire to be
original, to break away from the idea du jour – she
insists on it, stating “Too many times I don’t do
something because somebody else did it.”
In 1987, she married leather goods entrepreneur
Patrizio Bertelli after meeting him a decade earlier
at a trade fair. Shortly after their meeting, he joined
the Prada company in order to overhaul its business
structure, and is now co-CEO of the company alongside
his wife, making them one of the most powerful
partnerships in both the fashion and business
worlds. When Miuccia inherited the company, sales
were up to USD 450,000 and, with Bertelli assuming
the financial management of the business, Prada
was allowed time to focus on perfecting the brand’s
new aesthetic.
NEW AESTHETIC TRANSFORMS BRAND
In 1985, Prada launched her first successful line of
bags, a range of understated, utilitarian black nylon
handbags and rucksacks, infusing synthetic fabrics
with a newly glamorous appeal. This now iconic
range of bags formed the antithesis of the logosaturated
accessories popular in the 1980s, allowing
its inherent minimalism to stand out while the
brand’s triangular metal logo remained subtle. This
underlying philosophy subsequently shaped Prada’s
design aesthetic, combining clean lines with innovative
fabrics, proudly manufactured in Italy, in order
to unite luxury and wearability. Despite the popularity
of the products, financial success was initially
slow. The combination of high prices, minimal
advertising and internally-generated funding led
Prada and Bertelli to seek out wholesale accounts
in high-end department stores and boutiques.
Her first ready-to-wear womenswear line,
launched in 1988, received unenthusiastic reviews
deriding the seemingly lackluster aesthetic of its
predominately black palette and minimalistic
shapes. By this time, however, Prada was already
an internationally recognized brand, owing to Bertelli’s
cautious expansion strategies. Boutiques had
begun to open in prominent shopping destinations
across Europe including Milan, Madrid and Paris,
before moving into Asia and the United States. The
powerful yet feminine lines of this collection’s functional
tailoring elevated the brand’s desirability, and
transformed it into the aspirational label of choice
for a new generation of active, modern women. Its
Prada pursues a passion for contemporary
art, design and architecture. At Prada’s
chic Epicenter concept store in Tokyo,
Japan, the Herzog & de Meuron design
aims to meld culture and consumption.
minimalism was revolutionary amid a decade awash
with conspicuous luxury, setting a precedent for
Prada’s signature formulation of her own trends,
rather than merely reinterpreting fashion’s preoccupations
of the moment. As a backlash toward
using fashion as an external signifier of wealth and
status began, Prada inexplicably captured the mood
of a gen­eration seeking a more intellectual concept
of feminine beauty. Menswear and sportswear collections
followed in 1993, promoting a more discreet
style of dress focused around a dark palette and
characteristically Italian details: knitted polo
shirts, wide-sleeved jackets and pointed shoes
cemented Prada’s craft-based innovations as new,
modern classics.
In 1993, following the launch of her first menswear
collection, Prada launched a secondary womenswear
label, Miu Miu, named after Miuccia’s childhood
nickname. The label was distinguished by its
more whimsical aesthetic, younger target market
and more affordable price point. Through its printed
dresses, pastel-colored handbags, embellished
footwear and Rococo-inspired costume jewelry, Miu
Miu’s witty formula blends together nostalgia and
modernity. Prada handpicked young actresses such
as Kirsten Dunst as the models for Miu Miu’s advertising
imagery, projecting a playful vision of femininity,
one often tinged with a poignant sense of irony.
The Fondazione Prada in Milan, Italy,
fosters ideas and creative practices in art,
architecture and science. It aims to
promote the value of culture in society.