Miuccia Prada

Miuccia Prada

May 28, 2005
EVER since a rucksack made of industrial parachute nylon sent women - and counterfeiters - into a tizzy in the 1980s, one name has remained firmly on the lips of fashion troopers everywhere: Miuccia Prada.

The woman behind fashion house Prada, Time magazine recently named the Italian - the only fashion designer on the list - one of the 100 Most Influential People in the world last month.
But for all the greatness that is thrust upon one of the most copied fashion designers, she is a little self-deprecative and not what you imagine her to be in person. She tells Life! of the Time Magazine accolade: 'It's a compliment. But I don't deliberately work towards such ends.'
The 55-year-old was in Shanghai last Wednesday night for the opening of a Prada exhibition, Waist Down, at the Peace Hotel. Curated by OMA-AMO, the design collective headed by acclaimed Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, it showcases a collection of Prada skirts since her first womenswear collection in 1989.
Seeking an audience with Mrs Prada - as she is known to her staff - is near impossible. The fiercely shy woman is rarely photographed and she never takes a bow at the end of runways unlike flashier contemporaries like Giorgio Armani or Donatella Versace.
Her reserved nature was apparent when she was spotted touring the exhibition with an entourage of minders earlier during the day. The subject of countless cameras wielded by gawking reporters in full-on Prada garb, she appeared to be uncomfortable and a bundle of nerves.
Her media shyness, possibly, explains why she routinely turns down interviews - even from established international press, say her staff. For example, this reporter's repeated requests for an interview over the years have always been met with a flat 'No' from the headquarters in Italy.

But by a stroke of good fortune, I chanced upon her at a party held in her honour at the Peace Hotel's club-room bar. Unblocked by minders, she was in a cosy tete-a-tete with her husband, Patrizio Bertelli, 58, the CEO of her company.
In the flesh, the designer is petite - about 1.53m-tall - and strides about elegantly in 5-inch stiletto heels. Her peroxide-tipped brown hair is held back by a headband - a look which is now popping out from fashion magazines everywhere. Her handsome face bears little make-up.
Her purple shirt embellished with antique brooches and her black, knee-length full skirt whisper good taste.

Unlike her discomforted self a few hours earlier, she seems much more spritely and relaxed. She acknowledges you with a firm handshake and does not seem bothered to have been interrupted in mid-conversation with her husband, who moves quietly away in the course of the 10-minute exchange she has with Life!.
Up close, she is polite to a fault. She smiles and giggles quite a bit, displaying a demeanour that is surprisingly girlish despite her glamorous school-marmish appearance.

Reluctant heiress
BUT while she is happy to talk about her exhibition - she tells you excitedly she is impressed with the Shanghai exhibition and prefers it to 'the one at the Tokyo Prada flagship store last year' - she is hard to pin down on just about everything else.
Ask her for her idea of sexiness and she pleads: 'The place and time is not right to talk about this. Can we talk about some other topics?'

What does she think of the fashion world calling her an 'intellectual designer'?
'I don't consciously try to be intelligent in my designs. If people see it in my designs, then the intellectual aspect is an accidental consequence,' she says, without elaborating.
Though she tries to be cooperative, she clearly does not want to give herself away. Her answers often border on philosophical musings and do little to dispel her reputation among fashion cognoscenti as a serious fashion intellectual.
As befitting someone who does not suffer fools, her voice is quiet and her manner straightforward yet intimate. Her English is near-perfect though the way she rolls her Rs hints at a delicate Venetian accent.

'All I do is design'
While some topics such as her personal life are off-limits, her eyes light up when she talks about design. She says she hates to spend too much time designing as it leads to her fussing and over-thinking. She also prefers to work with colours and influences she instinctively dislikes. 'It's too easy to do what I like. There's no challenge.'
And if her clothes could talk, they would probably be singing about how, with scary prescience, she has defined several key fashion moments in the past decade (see other story).
In the presence of fashion giant Prada, a visitor visits the Waist Down exhibition of the brand's skirts at the Peace Hotel in Shanghai. The show is on till May 31. -- PHOTO: REUTERS
If she seems to operate from a discreet distance, away from the over-the-top antics of fashion, it is because she is literally cut from a different cloth.

When she inherited the business from her grandfather, she was a reluctant heiress to a luxury bag empire, with no formal training in fashion design. A trained mime artist from Milan's Teatro Piccolo, she is also armed with a PhD in political science from Milan State University. Her final-year thesis was on the Italian Communist Party and state education.

As a student, she had reservations about taking over the family business. She was unable to reconcile her interest in fashion with her fondness for politics, despite wearing Yves Saint Laurent and Courreges (both French labels) while distributing political leaflets as an active Communist Party member.

She lets up with a certain unease when asked if there are still contradictions between her political convictions and what she is now. 'The problem is that to be a fashion designer you're supposed to be stupid. I hate the idea of appearing like an intellectual and so I indulge in a certain camouflage,' she says.

Her contradictory personality is certainly reflected in her label's unconventional and idiosyncratic aesthetics. Just as the designer is quirky yet undiscernible, her clothes are conservative yet with a twist, and always with a hint of intelligence and depth.
Her oblique approach to fashion, informed invariably by her political sensibilities, also lends a certain integrity in her work sometimes lacking in other designers.

Still, Prada, who claims to 'get crazy over a pair of pink shoes', is ambivalent about her guilty pleasure - fashion. 'I go around thinking that my work is somehow superficial and unintelligent. That fashion shouldn't be given so much time or consideration,' she says, furrowing her brow.
'But fashion is only as stupid as industrial design or architecture or anything aesthetic in life. But fashion is more serious than these, no? It's what you put on yourself, what you present to others. It has so many implications - psychological, social and personal.'
At this point, her Italian personal assistant interrupts and requests politely for the chat to end. What makes her label so ahead of its time, so fashionable, one asks hurriedly.
'Why is Prada so fashionable?' she says to herself. 'I don't know. All I do is design.'
And for that, Prada-philes have two words for her: Miuccia gracias.
Waist Down is on at the Peace Hotel, 20 Nanjing Road East, in Shanghai till May 31.

Love triangle
HOW Prada and its discreet inverted triangular logo became the success fashion story of the 1990s reads like the plot of a 1980s mini-series.
The Italian brand was started by Miuccia Prada's grandfather Mario in 1913 and was subsequently taken over by her mother Luisa in 1958 after his death. When Miuccia took over the reins in 1971, Prada specialised in luxury leather trunks and suitcases for wealthy Milanese.
Prada's quantum leap into the fashion stratosphere only came in 1978, the year she met her husband, Patrizio Bertelli, now the CEO of her company, Prada Group.

Legend has it that they met at a factory that was producing leather products for both of them. The company Mr Bertelli was working for at the time was ripping off Prada's designs.
The two rivals, however, went into partnership and then fell in love. Or as Mr Bertelli told British magazine Arena Homme Plus: 'Miuccia was such a first-rate worker and designer, I knew it would be cheaper in the long run to marry her.' They have two teenage sons, Lorenzo and Giulio.

Her creative vision combined with his entrepreneurial zest transformed Prada not only into a commercial success, but also something of a cultural phenomenon, referenced in a novel (The Devil Wears Prada) and shows like Sex And The City.
Today the family business has blossomed into a US$2 billion (S$3.25 billion) privately-owned multi-brand fashion empire that not only houses Prada and Miu Miu, the designer's nickname and second line, but also Helmut Lang, Jil Sander and Azzedine Alaia, brands that share similar aesthetics.

From bags and shoes to the first womenswear collection (1989), the Miu Miu line (1993), menswear (1994), Prada Sport (1997) and Prada Beauty (2000), Prada constantly redefines luxury, subtlety and desirability in fashion.

In the early 1990s, Prada pioneered utilitarian chic at a time when excess was all the rage. In 1997, Prada Sport pre-empted the sports-fashion union that has now become a mainstream selling opportunity.

Last year, she popularised the 1940s glamorous, sexy librarian look and introduced robot-charms - looks that were copied by all and sundry.
This year, she stunned the colour-happy fashion industry by declaring black as, well, the new black.

While Prada may have divorced herself from her leftist politics, she has since channelled her energies to other loftier disciplines like art and architecture.

A case in point is Fondazione Prada, the art foundation she founded in 1993 which is active in promoting various art forms including independent art-house flicks.
There is also the brand's commitment to building one-of-a-kind epicentres, designed by architectural heavyweights like Rem Koolhaas (New York and Los Angeles) and Herzog & De Meuron (Tokyo).

'I've always been more interested in these disciplines first than fashion. I never wanted to be in fashion. But as a woman I do love fashion,' she says. 'Actually, I love clothes, which is different. I don't like the fashion world as much.' -- Lionel Seah