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Miuccia Prada 1949– (Italy) Once termed the “aristocommunist,” Miuccia Prada produces work that expresses contradiction. Her unconventional path to the fashion industry led first to a doctorate in political science and five years training as a mime before, in 1978, she joined the luxury goods company that her grandfather, Mario Prada, had founded in 1913. In 1985 with Patrizio Bertelli, her business partner, mentor, and future husband, she introduced a collection of bags and backpacks constructed of rugged black nylon adorned only with the company logo on a small triangular metal plate. By the early 1990s, resonating with an understated current within fashion, they would become one of the most coveted accessories of the day. In 1988, the company showed its first ready-to-wear collection in Milan. In 1992, the brand further expanded with a less expensive but more personal collection, both sensual and eccentric, to which Prada gave her nickname, Miu Miu. Menswear and sportswear lines followed. In the late 1990s and 2000s, the Prada Group began buying and selling stakes in other fashion companies, including Gucci, Fendi, and, notoriously, rivals Jil Sander and Helmut Lang. Prada began also to rethink the experience of shopping, launching innovative “epicenters,” the first in New York’s Soho designed by Rem Koolhaas, and, more recently, introducing salon-style gatherings in the Miu Miu stores.
Photos by firstVIEW.
In the northern Italian tradition of quality industrial manufacturing, Prada has eleven in-house production houses and a team of talented designers to draw on. She has built a strong reputation for eccentric but wearable clothing and accessories, with an offhand sense of luxury. Her approach to materials is imaginative; her color schemes improbable; and her proportions, awkward. Designing for the many different identities a woman might choose to express, and inspired most by the things that repel her, Prada pairs bad taste with refinement, staidness with provocation, ugliness with beauty. Making no effort to be fashionable, she is an intelligent interpreter of her times and a forecaster of trends.
Right Prada, Spring/ Summer 2000
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(Text) (Ray)
(Fogra 39)Job:10-29436 Title:RP-Fashion Design Referenced #175 Dtp:225 Page:334
10/26/12 3:34 PM 10/26/12 1:15 PM