Miuccia Prada - Designer, Co-Creative Director of Prada & Creative Director of Miu Miu

[Thefrenchy]

Miuccia Prada @ The Metropolitan Museum of Art's COSTUME INSTITUTE Benefit Celebrating PUNK: Chaos to Couture - May 06, 2013

VOGUE.COM

 

[dsamg]

She is so well spoken and so interesting. I love reading her interviews.

 

[GivenchyHomme]

I beleive this is from 2007, but it's still a good interview.

 

[Chanelcouture09]

^Terrific, Thank you

 

[Nymphaea]

Miuccia Prada, head of luxury brand label, speaks of fascination with 'ugliness'

Miuccia Prada, the designer whose eponymous label and its associated brands are now worth £3 billion, has spoken of her fascination with "ugliness".

Claire Duffin | 25 August 2013

It is a word rarely used in the fashion industry, but insisted she found it far more interesting than "beauty".
In an interview with theTelegraph's Stella magazine, Prada said she had been criticised for her approach to fashion, which was seen as allowing the trashy into the world of haute couture, when she took over the family fashion house in 1978 .

It was originally set up by Mario Prada, her grandfather, as a maker of leather goods in Milan but is now one of the world's leading fashion brands.

However in the interview, which is published next week, Prada said she did not see herself as part of the conventional fashion industry.

"When I started, fashion was the worst place to be if you were a leftist feminist. It was horrid. I had a prejudice, yes, I always had a problem with it," she said.

"I suppose I felt guilty not to be doing something more important, more political. So in a way I am trying to use the company for these other activities."

Prada, 64, runs the brand with her husband Patrizio Bertelli, and jointly built up its commercial success.

however the inspiration for the designs remains her own, including, she said, her unusual interest in ugliness.

"Ugly is attractive, ugly is exciting. Maybe because it is newer," she said.

"The investigation of ugliness is, to me, more interesting than the bourgeois idea of beauty. And why? Because ugly is human.

"It touches the bad and the dirty side of people. You know, this might have been a scandal in fashion but in other fields of art it is common: in painting and in movies it was so common to see ugliness.

"But, yes, it was not used in fashion and I was very much criticised for inventing the trashy and the ugly."

Prada is unusual in being a woman at the head of a fashion company and said she was conscious of her gender, and also the balance of raising a family - she and her husband have two grown-up sons - and running a firm.

"Sometimes I still feel that women don't appreciate their position in society," she said.

"That we are not strong enough to impose our thinking. We don't like businesswomen: we go against women who appear to be like men.

"I chose a compromise, a complete compromise. I chose a bit of avant-garde, a bit of fashion, and for me it works. I don't want to reject my past because I have it so deeply inside me. To be nice with a man, I don't think it's so bad."

fashion.telegraph.co.uk

 

[Thefrenchy]

In Venice, a few days ago...

VANITYFAIR.FR

 

[LylaScans]

TALK MAGAZINE DECEMBER 1999/JANUARY 2000
They Owned the 90s (6 pages)
Photographer: Michael Birt
Stars: Miuccia Prada


my scans

 

[bonus]

Looking Through Mrs. Prada's Eyes
Miuccia Prada discusses fashion, art and Prada with Cathy Horyn

Milan, late May: The design home of Miuccia Prada never looks more like a factory in an Italian neorealist film than it does in the off-season between shows. Sunshine fills the courtyard of the sprawling complex. In a corner an industrial-size chute loops in a spiral from a window to the ground. It's actually a slide by the artist Carsten Höller.

A zippy escape route? That might qualify as a subversive joke, since normally the fashion world is beating to get in to see Miuccia.

We meet upstairs in a conference room next to her office; a light lunch, which will include wine (she partakes), has been set out. She immediately offers condolences for the recent death of my partner, and we spend several minutes talking about him. This is not strange, and yet it is. Although I have known Miuccia for 20 years—I've convinced myself that I can remember my very first Prada show (pale crepe de chine dresses, a '40s Berlin essence)—we are not close. I've visited her home, a loft-like apartment in the same building where she grew up, only once—to write an article about her and her husband, Patrizio Bertelli's, art interests. I see her backstage at her shows, like everybody else.

To the extent that I know Miuccia, it is through her clothes, though, clearly, that is saying a lot. As Michael Rock, a graphic designer who is a frequent collaborator, says, "Miuccia has excelled at making her own questions the subject of her work." For fall, there is a distinct anti-fancy attitude in plain silk dresses and the pairing of rough shearling coats with wispy '20s-style chemises. And because she was born in 1949, the culture of Europe in the '60s and '70s is never far from her mind. But while she may watch all of Fassbinder's films to get inspired, the process for Miuccia is never that direct.

At one point she tells me, in earnest, "Maybe I should change my life. There are people who are happy with little. And us, we are never excited with anything, or never enough. We're very ambitious. That complicates your life, but it's also the fuel of it. People with a simple life can be happy too."

She laughs a bit ironically. "Rich people need to be entertained more and more. And then I think, 'Let's not entertain anymore. Let's be simple.' "

Does she mean it? Maybe, maybe not, but such soul-searching speaks to her particular gift. Very few designers have her ability to dig under your skin. She makes you care about clothes, and I, for one, hate them. Of course, that's her ambivalence too. And her strategy. She knows how to make something feel a certain way.

A few random impressions of Milan's foremost agitator: She doesn't wear her intelligence for all to see. She's more modest, or simply shrewd. Nonetheless, she is mentally quick, like a bird in a lusty dive toward a piece of food. She listens as much with her eyes as her ears, and she keeps you, at all times, under her talon gaze. Her humor is the dry kind, with a chortling, deliver-me-from-this laugh.

And while she is intensely competitive—she makes no bones about being out to smother her near-and-dear peers with a great Prada show—she lacks the instinct, common in fashion, to put you down. She will at least consider what you have to say because she questions everything.

I mention, as we are passing platters of salad and spinach timbale, that I've been volunteering on a farm. I am, needless to say, curious how this will be received. Miuccia, though, merely nods and fills her plate. "Farming is an option," she says, interested. "I actually like the country very much." Then, perhaps thinking of her garden in Tuscany (she and Bertelli have a home there, as well as one in the Swiss mountains), she adds, "I realize I have no patience with my hands anymore. I've become manually impatient—the hands don't correspond to the speed of the mind. If I can't do it in one second, I don't have the patience to redo it."

Miuccia, who has on a charcoal top and skirt with a hula fringe of metal chain at the neck and a taupe headband framing her face, began work on her spring men's collection the day before. It will be shown in a month's time and will include a few women's looks as a tease for September. She says the theme will be classics—"whatever that means"—then immediately offers that it could wind up "the subtitle" of the show. "Usually when I say 'classic,' " she says with a brisk laugh, "it means I have no ideas." (However she felt a month later, insiders sensed from her middle-of-the-road togs "a conservative turn." Even the cocktail food was picked for useful clues: It was "fiercely untrendy.")

One wonders how much insiders actually know about Miuccia's methods. "It's really a drama," she says of the number of times she can change her mind or add something before a show, often in the final week or two. "This is not very nice maybe, but all of the decisions are because we are late. And mainly it's me. If I can postpone and postpone …" She shrugs. "Sometimes you need unconsciously to let your mind consider an idea."

For the women's show in September, she and design director Fabio Zambernardi will have their initial meeting in July so, as he says, they can get an idea down before the August holiday. That leaves the design team three weeks to get the show together. (Miu Miu is essentially done in 12 days.) Zambernardi, who started at Prada in 1989—a year after Miuccia first showed—believes that the intense process helps her to be precise but, maybe more, to rely on her instincts.

Still, he admits, "after all these conversations, the day before the show she'll say, 'Oh, it's so beautiful, I'm so happy, but what's it all about?' " He laughs. "Almost like a child asking, 'How did we get to this point?' She needs a recap of her thoughts. Me too!"

Such "drama" is possible because of the Prada machine—the industrial side of the $5-billion-a-year company run by her husband. For Miuccia, it just works. "You have to consume one idea so that the next idea comes," she says. The biggest challenge for her right now is how to throw out relevant ideas to a global audience in a way that is also clear: "The simplification is a nightmare! It's everywhere. In politics." And, of course, it's in art and fashion. Still, she says, "I don't want to address myself to a small, elite group. This is too easy." She's gratified that so many young people she meets are widely informed. "They know so much about everything, the references," she says, adding with a chuckle, "I often have the feeling that young people are more free than those with the complex to be modern. And what does it mean, modern?"

 

[bonus]

Continuation

She sighs. But instead of continuing in that vein, she says, "There is a key point that people keep underestimating about me: I am a very trendy person! I mean, my job is more complicated, but basically I am interested in what's next. Since I was 16, I wanted to be the first one. I wanted to be different."

What makes a Prada show different has a lot to do with Miuccia's ability to create mood. Michael Rock, whose firm makes the wallpaper and murals she uses and who is heavily involved in exhibitions, like the recent "Pradasphere," at Harrods in London, says she really grasps the affective aspect of fashion. That is, the impression a style (or a show) can leave. This indirect method of conveying an idea also keeps her from being overly intellectual about it, Rock says.

For instance, the Fall 2013 show, with the tweed dresses in '60s cocktail cuts worn over sweaters, with high heels and the models' hair in damp clumps as if from rain or a night of sex. The audience was in a tizzy over its glamour. Pure affect. Or take the controversial Fall 2010 show featuring the bosomy models Doutzen Kroes and Lara Stone and a lot of dowdy dresses covered in pastry frills. Readers of one blog went wild, saying it evoked Madame Tito, fond memories of their mothers, and even "a post-socialist aesthetic of warmth and human pace." Still…pure affect.

She has an incredible handle on that," says Rock. He recalls his favorite Miuccia quote. He'd asked her about an idea for a show and she replied, "What's an idea in fashion? It's a little '20s, a little '60s, a little Russian woman on a horse." Of course, Miuccia is rather more complex than that—as is a Prada show. The difference is the Miuccia effect.

In the mid-'70s, after getting a doctorate in political science and studying for a while in a mime theater, Miuccia went to work in the family's leather-goods store in Milan. She needed a job, but it must have felt like a defeat to a young idealist. Milan fashion was not the glitz it is today. Giorgio Armani and Gianni Versace hadn't yet arrived. Besides, Miuccia hated fashion—or, rather, she hated the tastethat ruled it. Not just good taste but the rigid system of taste that in the '70s was being defined by designer brands. Her answer in the late '70s and '80s was to wear old uniforms and kids' clothes.

In 1977, she met Bertelli at a trade fair. He had a factory in Tuscany. She once told the writer Michael Specter that Bertelli was the most bullheaded, arrogant man she had ever met. They fell in love, married in 1987, and, for better or worse, have been together ever since. It was Bertelli, she told Specter, who pushed her to design shoes and clothes, mainly by threatening to get someone else to do it. She wasn't going to give him the satisfaction, so she did it herself. But, she conceded, "Bertelli was right. I would have been bored only doing bags."

Germano Celant, the charismatic director of the Prada Foundation and a family friend, relates his own dealings with the couple: "Miuccia and I are very idealistic, very romantic, going for what I would call mental masturbation. Patrizio gives you the answer in two seconds. Making everything real. It's a fantastic combination. She's the conceptual creator, and he's the anchor."

Miuccia's answer to high fashion in the '90s, when she introduced Prada's notion of ugly chic, wasn't just personal; it was a rebuttal to Milan's system of presenting a consistent style and silhouette each season. She really challenged that notion by changing Prada's direction every season, often dramatically. The consequences of that move have been profound. Because unlike most of her competition, Miuccia isn't obliged to stay within this narrow lane of expression. Which, as Rock points out, has become only more confining with corporate branding. Miuccia is free to explore. And change her mind.

When I talk to Celant, a week or so after my Milan visit, I mention that the freest birds in the fashion world happen to be two mature women—Miuccia and Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons. "That's because they're artists," he says. "They don't care about the market at the end. The artist learns that the more you are free and creative, the more you sell. And coherence is the worst. Coherence means style. Rei and Miuccia try to go against that idea—every time."

He goes on. "The big artists were always creative late in life. Duchamp. Karl Lagerfeld is another one. Have you seen his home in Paris? All the books." Celant grunts with pleasure. "They are really cannibals. That's Miuccia too. Looking for the new art, the new architect. And pushing themselves. To me, Miuccia has an obsession—to throw the ball far, far out there. To get an idea."

Lately she's been fascinated by classical art, perhaps as a counter to the current scene. ("I can't talk badly about art at the moment," she says with a laugh.) Next May, when the foundation opens its new headquarters, in a spectacular redo of an old distillery in the south of Milan, it will host an exhibition called "Serial Classic," featuring Roman art. "It's the idea of copies," she says of the concept. "The sculptors were busier doing copies for rich people, all wanting the same thing. It was worse than now."

Our lunch plates have been cleared, and Miuccia steps out to retrieve a tray of coffee and tea. Some years ago, over a similar lunch at Prada, Bertelli asked me (in front of his wife) how I thought the press would treat Miuccia when she was an older designer. The question has stayed with me in part because of Bertelli's touching candor and in part because he obviously had nothing to fear. When Miuccia returns to the room, I mention my theory that the three most determined radicals are feminists over the age of 65—her, Rei Kawakubo, and Vivienne Westwood. What's the explanation, I wonder.

Miuccia's eyes widen. "That's true. I never thought about it. Maybe women are more aware of their problems. We touch every day on our skin." Yet for all that, Miuccia has no interest in showing her clothes on older women, or indeed on any body type other than a model's. Many people have wondered how she can defend her position.

"I don't have the courage" to use older models, she says. Really?

"Eh, because the fashion world is my job," she says with a shrug. "And I have to compromise. I don't even want to do it—there are not enough examples of women getting older in a good way. Also, I don't like to make politics on the runway. I want to be political in an indirect way." But then she reveals that she had older women in her first show. "Because it was new and it came naturally," she explains. "Now if you put older women on a runway, it's a cliché."

Miuccia is naturally competitive, as if it weren't obvious. She admits to checking out other designers' shows online. "For sure, we all look at each other," she says. "Maybe it's not very noble, but it's like this." She admires the work of Marc Jacobs and Nicolas Ghesquière, to name two.

Stirring her tea, she adds, "And I feel much more noble when I realize that someone else has a good show. I'm not super happy, but I respect it. I can't pretend I don't care about competition."

The fact is, it's difficult for a creative person to reconcile all of her conflicts, and Miuccia, like Kawakubo, essentially doesn't want to explain everything on the grounds that it can sound trite. Personally, I feel I've come closest to understanding her—what really touches her and therefore her fashion—when I bring up the Fall 2010 collection, the one with Doutzen Kroes and the dowdy dresses. I tell her about the blog comments, the post-socialist rap, a lovely thought about "tea and brandy and the kitchen table."

Miuccia looks at me intently; she seems startled. Then she says, "Yes, the big dress is the memory of peasants, of such huge humanity, and that is something I really care about, the efforts of women, when they really have a difficult life. In the country, in the fields, during the war. Today. The effort of women. It's really something that to me is very present. The sufferance of women." She explains, "When I do fashion, I don't want to inject my other knowledge and to look intellectual, but obviously it comes out. Also, because I am not an intellectual; I am more human. That's why I have a good relationship with the most difficult artists. Because, at the end, good people are very human."

When I spoke to Celant, I asked him what Miuccia does for fun. He snorted as if to say, "C'mon, she's Italian!" "She has friends from high school," he says. "She spends time with them—playing cards, listening to music, watching football. Yes. Like everyone. They play cards until one in the morning, and they're screaming. It's very simple." Celant adds, "And banal. Why not!"

I sense from Miuccia, the mother of two grown sons ("I'm not allowed to talk about them. They're so severe with me!"), that family occasions are a big deal. "The home is always full of people," she says. For getaways, she has a small sailboat. She'll go off alone or with a friend. When I asked Zambernardi where she keeps the boat, he replied, "Where the sun is. Mostly south Italy."

And now our session has come to a close. We have reached the apertivo hour. I ask Miuccia when she is happiest. "When I have new ideas," she says a little too quickly. "When I excite myself, that means I have new ideas."

But the answer doesn't satisfy her. "For sure, I care more about my life than my job, but there is nothing I do that is not related to my way of thinking and what I want," she says finally. "So my life is one. And art and fashion are circulating. I'm anchored to the ground and to life."

By Cathy Horyn on Aug 12, 2014 - harpersbazaar.com

 

[tatouejeremie]

nice article, fantastic to see that cathy horyn is still writing

 

[mistress_f]

Miuccia designed the costumes for (suprise!) Francesco Vezzoli's latest show/performance 'Fortuna Desperata'







i-d.vice.com / zimbio.com

 

[Phuel]

^^^ Oh my… this is just horrible. She’s dressed the women like a bunch of elderly midwives from the 15th-century, and dressed the lead male in a 7-year-old girl’s school smock— minus the shirt underneath, and mismatched booties… I don’t know how I can watch this if I were in the audience without thinking Miuccia’s punking the lot of us. Like Rei, from time to time, her designs are as visionary as they are trolling.

Thanks mistress_f for the update.

 

[Benn98]

At Risk of Being Left Behind, Prada Finally Sells Online in China

Ruonan Zheng
January 10, 2018

Adding e-commerce is integral to Prada’s evolving strategy as it tries to recover from declining profits in recent years. But will the new online store be enough?

Following the footsteps of Gucci, Bally, and Louis Vuitton, Prada has finally launched an official online store in China.

Prada says the rationale for the move is to hasten the company’s digital transformation with the goal of recovering from declining profits and sales in the past few years.

When asked “Why not E-commerce” in 2014, Prada’s CEO Patrizio Bertelli responded that he has “more important things to do, like opening stores, for example.”

But the store expansions didn’t add substantial value to the group, which includes Prada, Miu Miu, Church’s and Car Shoe. Its profits fell 27 percent in 2016 to their lowest levels in five years. Profits in China, one of the largest markets for the group, fell 16 percent with low foot traffic through the stores. During the same period, sales at Gucci and Louis Vuitton saw a significant turn-around in the region.

Prada blamed costly retail space and slower economic growth. Analysts urged the group not to focus on building new stores but innovating new, exciting designs. Unlike Gucci, which has made some drastic creative changes, Prada tends to do things more incrementally, leaving consumers unimpressed and dissatisfied.

Mr. Bertelli has since admitted that Prada was late to understand the importance of the digital market for luxury sales.

According to Chiara Tosato, General Manager and Digital e-Commerce Director at Prada, the new website will: drive global online sales; create an omni-channel shopping experience that integrates online and offline shopping; and increase Prada’s communications presence online.

These goals are reflected on the site, which includes mobile-first navigation (perfect for people out shopping who want to check product details online), and richer media content that ensures the store doesn’t diminish the brand’s visual identity online.

A wide range of products are available, along with personalized concierge services, such as a “virtual assistant” chat bot and the ability to book in-store services. Items can be purchased online for pickup in-store, and payments can be made using Alipay and WeChat.

A Prada retail store manager told us that every sales associate is now equipped with an iPhone with a WeChat account to communicate with interested customers. They also conduct the deep analysis of customers’ WeChat post and add any notable information to CRM system.

It appears that Prada is not taking digital transformation lightly and holds a rather conservative attitude towards the progress. The Digital e-commerce Director Tosato projected that e-commerce will account for only 5 percent of total sales by the end of 2018.

Source: Jingdaily.com

 

[GivenchyHomme]

So the Menswear show for Fall 2018 will be in a new location.

From WWD

PRADA INVITES: For the first time in years, Prada will hold its men’s show in a new location in Milan. On Sunday, the company will stage the event at a company warehouse in Viale Ortles 35, not far from the headquarters of Fondazione Prada. This marks another first and a new project, as the fashion house has invited four celebrated creative talents — Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec, Konstantin Grcic, Herzog & de Meuron and Rem Koolhaas — to each develop a unique item by using Prada’s iconic nylon material. The designs will be unveiled on Sunday during the show.

For the “Prada Invites” project, “the focus is shifted to the industrial side of the multifaceted Prada identity,” said the company, explaining that the new location “resonates with the creative signatures of the architects and designers.”

French brothers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec have designed over the years for the likes of Vitra, Kvadrat, Magis, Kartell and Established and Sons, among others. After founding its own studio, the Konstantin Grcic Industrial Design in Munich in 1991, Grcic has designed furniture and lighting for brands including Flos, Magis, Mattiazzi, Muji, Nespresso and Plank, to name a few. Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, who won the Pritzker Prize in 2001, developed Prada’s “Epicenter” store in a striking six-story glass building in Tokyo’s Aoyama district, unveiled in 2003. Koolhaas with his Rotterdam-based studio OMA, has collaborated on several projects with Prada, from the Epicenter stores in New York and Los Angeles to the Fondazione Prada, opened in 2015 in a space that previously housed a distillery established in the first decade of the 20th century.

“Prada Invites” manifests four radically different approaches that investigate the poetic, practical, technical and aesthetic aspect of nylon, said the company.

http://wwd.com/fashion-news/fashion...all-2018-collection-in-new-location-11094731/

 

[MissMagAddict]

UK Vogue March 2018 | The Prada Perspective



source | mydigitalcopy

 

[Benn98]

Miuccia Muses in Manhattan

Before showing her cruise collection, Miuccia Prada chatted with WWD about low-key subjects: fashion, politics and religion.

By Bridget Foley on May 7, 2018

When it comes to cruise, Miuccia Prada hasn’t given into wanderlust — until now. While for years her major luxury competitors have embraced the itinerant way, showing their collections in mega-statement shows in locales both far-flung and, this season, close to home, Prada long opted for a more low-key method, teasing her women’s resort as part of her June men’s show in Milan. Last year signaled a change of perspective when she staged a separate show and dinner at Fondazione Prada. Now, she’s all in on the high-profile approach. On Friday, she showed her collection — a brilliant treatise on how to make commercial compelling — at the brand’s New York “home” on 52nd Street overlooking the Hudson River, followed by a dinner for 200 guests. “Everybody is doing more, and so you have to adapt,” she said.

Earlier in the day, Prada sat down with WWD. The conversation wended through fashion fantasy and reality, coed shows, political correctness and her upcoming date with an archbishop.

WWD: Let’s start with the show. Why a big show, and why New York?

Miuccia Prada: First of all, because it’s a long time since we’ve done anything in New York. And because for this kind of cruise show, everybody tries to do something that is not the usual space, so we decided to first use our homes…We restored [this building] around 15 years ago, so we decided to do it here…The last floor is empty, and there we have the show and the dinner.

WWD: You haven’t traditionally done big cruise shows. But last year, a big event in Milan. And now this.

M.P.: Yes. Because everybody is doing more, and so you have to adapt, more or less. The effort for doing a presentation is the same as doing a show. With a show, you work better, you are challenging yourself a bit more. So it’s very useful. Because at the end, [for] all the buying of the rest [of the brand’s offerings], there are references. The show always helps everybody to give, let’s say, a soul.

WWD: Tell me about the theme of the collection.

M.P.: The theme of tonight…[It] would be like a fantasy and the reality. So something very real, but of course, it’s always a fantasy. It’s my fantasy of what is real for me today. A show is always a fantasy. Last season, the show was really a fantasy, [about] these crazy women going outside and naked but safe in the night and so on. This is more about reality — things that you want to wear, a presentation of the real today, from my point of view. But still, I say it’s a fantasy because it’s not exactly what people wear in the street. It’s different. But it’s simple, not a lot of thought. We tried to make it strong with very simple things — a skirt and a sweater. We tried to make it enough for a show, but…a simplification.

WWD: Would you say examining women’s roles and women’s sensuality is the primary creative focus of your work?

M.P.: The primary [focus] basically is fashion. For sure, with the fashion I always wanted to represent a woman that makes sense for my principles…

I’m very interested in the life of people. That’s what really interests me, so the problems of women, the difficulties of women, the life of poor women, the life of rich women…It comes instinctively. It’s not that I sit down and say, “Now I want to represent the life of [this type of] people.” But of course, you dress a woman, you think about the woman, so you think about lives from different angles. Sometimes it’s the rich, sometimes it’s the poor. Sometimes it’s very much mixed because anytime I like [something], I also like just the opposite, which is probably one of my quintessential characteristics.

WWD: The opposition?

M.P.: Yes, yes.

WWD: Are you concerned about the cultural appropriation issue? Do you ever hold back on a reference you’d like to explore because of possible social media reaction?

M.P.: I’m not reading social media. Of course, I know what happens…I am not afraid of comments. I believe in what I do, so somebody likes it, somebody doesn’t like it, and it’s not that that worries me.

WWD: Does the idea of creative people potentially holding back on their ideas concern you?

M.P.: That is an ongoing problem that occupies my thoughts a lot, also in art. At the Fondazione, we just did a show about that [“Post Zang Tumb Tuuum. Art Life Politics: Italia 1918–1943,” running through June 25th].

[At a related event], I spoke very openly about this subject, more for art than for fashion, but more or less, it’s the same. You have to be careful not to offend anybody…[There’s] so much political correctness, politically correct issues, that those are limiting, that’s for sure. I see kind of a natural consequence of the globalization of the communication. For instance, before, if I had an interview with [WWD], I talk to you in a way that I know you understand. But now I don’t talk only to you. The moment I talk to you…in fact, talk to everybody because the next day it can be everywhere. And that’s very difficult…you have to be so careful that you [risk saying] nothing…

So everything [then exists] in this kind of a superficiality where nothing goes deep.

WWD: And that’s sad.

M.P.: Yes, very. I think that we have to create a secret society, because I am really afraid that if you are not free to express and to say things that maybe are not [politically] correct, the thoughts don’t progress…You don’t do anything new, you don’t say anything interesting.

WWD: And how does the culture progress?

M.P.: Actually this is the big problem of today. At Fondazione Prada, we had an installation of Damien Hirst with the flies [“Waiting for Inspiration,” 1994, in the “Atlas” show]. The next day, the Protection of Animals said that you are killing flies. So even art, even places where you should be free to express ideas and thoughts, it’s difficult.

WWD: As one of fashion’s genuine great creators, how do you deal with that?

M.P.: Thank you.

WWD: Seriously, how do you deal with it?

M.P.: It’s my biggest problem. Because of course, I tend to be thoughtful, sophisticated and so on. And after, I try to simplify and simplify and simplify, because people dedicate a span of attention of one second. And the problem is, until which point you can simplify without becoming empty of content?

Very often…you try to express in a few words months of thinking, months of reading, months of experience, and at a certain point, you can’t simplify too much…

But I know that this is the common problem of more or less everybody. And you see it in politics, the politics is reduced to a hashtag. The complex [issues] of the world, the complex [issues] of the people are so huge; how can you synthesize that into words in two seconds of a span of attention? But this is the problem of now.

WWD: In general, what do you think of the current state of fashion? Do you think that fashion is in a good place or a not so good place?

M.P.: I think that it’s part of everything else. Because when fashion was part of a small group of sophisticated people you could exaggerate. You knew that you were talking to mainly rich Western, either American or European, people. And you knew to whom you were talking. Now, of course, myself, I am interested in a bigger world. Because to do things for [only] a few people today wouldn’t be so exciting. But again, try to be yourself, to express what you think…

It’s difficult, probably, for everybody. Because everybody that has a company, of course you have to sell. And also what is very interesting, the simplification, less and less stuff is sellable. If sneakers [are hot], only sneakers, if jeans, only jeans. So the simplification, it’s incredible, and everybody sells the same thing. Which is kind of scary because you want to do more.

WWD: Do you think the streetwear fascination is waning a little bit or will continue?

M.P.: In fashion, nothing continues. So I don’t know. Street is so, so vast. It is also difficult, it’s not even jeans and sneakers. Also there are so many different kinds of people. So at a certain point, everybody is looking only at a genre. Next year it’s over. The world is complicated, so you have to go [with] your feelings, basically.

WWD: Whom do you pay attention to in fashion?

M.P.: Competitors? I have a few that I like. But I don’t want to talk about it.

WWD: Are you constantly aware of competition?

M.P.: Absolutely.

WWD: Is it more creative competition or business competition?

M.P.: I think that competition is huge, also copying is huge. Somebody does something good and after six months everybody has it, identical. And so no one is surprised.

WWD: I read somewhere that you said you don’t really care if somebody copies you. Have you changed your mind on that?

M.P.: I think that is so totally inevitable. But I was not thinking particularly of people copying me, but that [when something is successful], everybody wants to do the same. And there is too much copying.

WWD: Are you always pushing to stay one step ahead?

M.P.: I would like to be one step forward, yes, absolutely. I try to be curious, I try to be better. Anyway, I care. Mostly because it’s the reason that we have a job — for fashion to move forward. Sometimes, actually, people accuse us of changing too much. But I really get bored very, very quickly. It’s funny, because I was fixated on a certain genre of girl, and at midnight last night [while finalizing the casting] I said, “You know what?”…

The [type of] girl that I asked to see one month ago, that I was fixated with for one year, last night I realized that I was completely fed up. And we laughed so much.

WWD: Will you tell me what genre of girl that was?

M.P.: No, no, no, no.

WWD: Speaking of which, diversity on the runway.

M.P.: I think it’s the only thing that excites me, really. Because that is new. It’s two or three seasons that I’m really interested, and looking at beauty with a different eye. So that is definitely a progress I did with myself. I really enjoy beauty of different races and different characters. It’s the part that now interests me most.

WWD: Beyond race and character type, how do you feel about diversity of age and size on the runway?

M.P.: In theory, I would do it. Actually, in my first show [fall 1989], I had all [different] women, young girls, and an older woman, Benedetta Barzini. Maybe back then I thought she was very old. She was probably only 45.

WWD: Our perspectives change.

M.P.: So in theory, I like it. But after so many other people have done it, I don’t want to do it. But in principle, I agree.

WWD: What about size diversity?

M.P.: Size diversity, again, in theory I accept, but so far I didn’t have really the courage to do it. Also…the subject is very trendy now. And that I don’t like so much. I don’t want to do it for those reasons…

WWD: It seems that it’s a little bit of a gimmick, putting one really curvy girl on the runway.

M..P: It’s a joke. It’s just to pretend to be good. It’s pretentious.

WWD: Typically, it’s only one curvy girl.

M.P.: Exactly. I think it’s hypocritical. I accept maybe some designers that really go for that. Otherwise, you try to be politically correct. It’s the sentiment I have for fur. To pretend that we are not companies that deal with rich people — you can’t pretend to be really popular, because at the end you do rich stuff for rich people. And so you can do it until a certain point. Otherwise it becomes pretentious and hypocritical.

WWD: Thank you for commenting for our fur story. It was so important to have your voice. It’s such a complicated issue.

M.P.: I know. They’re all good issues, but some serious issues [are difficult to address] from a fashion point of view. Actually, [earlier] in my life, I tried to be political in the system of fashion. And after we did Fondazione Prada, I am political in a political [sense].

For instance, we did [address] exactly the subject of living under a regime. It’s a fantastic show that talks about the men, women artist as a person under a regime.

CONTINUED.........

Source: WWD.com

 

[Benn98]

CONTINUED..........

WWD: The “Art Life Politics” show?

M.P.: Yes. If [it] mentioned the word fascism or a regime, [no one would] give us the paintings and the loans. [The point] was to see how an artist behaves under a regime. And I think that now we are somehow under a regime…This thing that you have to be careful with everything — I think we live kind of under a regime.

But what I can say as a fashion designer? I never want to talk about politics…As a fashion designer, I can’t be political because you are not believable. Because still you say, I am a rich fashion designer and so, I chose a job, that is the opposite of something that I think and I believe.

So my life is kind of split in two, but in a way that now I enjoy. Because I think that the experience I can do in the world of business and fashion can help the other one and vise versa. That’s why, for instance, I never wanted to do any collaboration with artists. Can you imagine? They are all my friends, the artists saying, “Why don’t we do that together?” I said no. I refuse to work with artists in the fashion world.

WWD: Why?

M.P.: At the beginning…I didn’t want to take advantage of the fame of the others…I wanted to be good by myself and I didn’t want to take advantage of the others. And [now], it’s been done so much — It’s not that I am right, but at some point I decided not to do it. So for the moment, I go on.

WWD: Do you think that the fashion-art collaborations have gotten out of hand? Everybody does them.

M.P.: You know, the collaboration is a long story…First, I was a little bit lazy and after, I didn’t understand the reason, because when I think about collaboration, I think about some serious job to do more. But now collaborations are the easiest way to sell…At the end, I realize that most of the collaborations are just done for money.

And actually, my life goes beyond making money. So thank God, I and my husband and the company, of course we have to make money because we have a company and we have responsibilities. But it’s not that I wake up in the morning thinking, “How can I make money?” That is the last of our problems.

WWD: Will you continue to do a major resort show every year?

M.P.: I am afraid I am obliged. In the company, they don’t want it. But I think that everybody does it and if you can do it…

Also now, because there are so many [shows] to do, in my mind, I treat them like chapters. So when you have to do a [single] fashion show for a season, I mean, you have to have really very good ideas, it has to be more bold. But if you consider that now there are more [shows], you can do small chapters. And then from this perspective, it’s easier…I consider it like a work in progress.

WWD: You’re not showing any men’s tonight, are you?

M.P.: There is one man.

WWD: One? What’s his role?

M.P.: So basically because he is the boyfriend of one girl. And I said, “But why should we show one boy?” And [then] I said, “OK, let’s do it.”

WWD: I love that.

M.P.: It’s a nonsense thing.

WWD: Where does he come in the run of show?

M..P: We are deciding now. But dressed masculine, dressed like a man.

WWD: No gender fluidity?

M.P.: That is another argument that — it’s very trendy.

WWD: What is your opinion on that?

M.P.: I think that people do whatever they want. But again, I don’t like when people use these issues [to elevate] themselves: “I am so good because I did this.” I think that when a subject is very serious, it’s better you shut up. I don’t know.

WWD: That’s interesting.

M.P.: When you are seriously political, you have to go so far that, probably in your job [as a fashion designer], you can’t because you are not a politician. You have a company that mainly sells to rich people, so how can you be so political?…You can only suggest.

WWD: Coed shows — you used to show women’s resort in your men’s show in June. Can you see yourself doing a major coed show for spring or fall?

M.P.: Again, I like to do the opposite of what others are doing. So I decide that now I do the men’s show…And also, because the men’s business is important for us. I do a fashion show for men, and I’m really dedicated to it. When we put women in the men’s show, men’s journalists complained that the women took away the attention from the men. And I thought it was kind of true.

WWD: You have your show tonight, the Met Gala on Monday. What will you do over the weekend in New York?

M.P.: A few interviews, go see a few exhibitions.

WWD: Frieze?

M.P.: No.

WWD: Which exhibitions?

M.P.: They told me that there is a very good one at the Whitney. And I have to see an artist for preparation of an exhibition [at Fondazione Prada] next year.

WWD: What are you expecting from “The Catholic Imagination” at the Met?

M.P.: About the religion? I am curious to see. I know that it’s very interesting that the Church decided to lend. And by coincidence, the Archbishop of Milano, he wants to see me, because probably, he wants to know about fashion.

WWD: He wants to see you?

M.P.: In Milan. He knew that the Church gave clothes to the Met for a fashion exhibition, so probably they think that fashion is something interesting.

WWD: Have you set a date?

M.P.: Not yet. But I am so curious. As soon as I go back, I will meet him.

WWD: It’s intriguing.

M.P.: Of course, the Church has the problem to be connected with reality…I am not religious anymore. I was educated in religion, but…

WWD: On that note, and before you make plans with the Archbishop, you’ve got a show to do. So I will take my leave.

M.P.: Yes. Excuse me. I have a function in two hours.

Source: WWD.com

 

[boleyns]

Love how she talked about diversity on the runway being one of the things that excites the most, especially when Prada shows used to be some of the most whitewashed. That's truly a positive development, and it seems genuine.

Also didn't really get when she said there was a boy in the show just because he was one of the girl's boyfriend. Does Kiki have that kind of influence? Did they book both her and Jonas just because they're a couple? I mean it made sense for that CK campaign where they were kissing, but here I don't really get why he was booked, or who pushed to have him in the show.
Makes me wonder if that's what happened when Vitto was dating Natalie.

 

[YohjiAddict]

I think you ansewered your own question, if they've already appeared on a CK campaign that signals to Rizzo as the one who asked for the both of them to be included, maybe he simply finds them adorable.

 

[helmutnotdead]

"And actually, my life goes beyond making money. So thank God, I and my husband and the company, of course we have to make money because we have a company and we have responsibilities. But it’s not that I wake up in the morning thinking, “How can I make money?” That is the last of our problems."

HAHAHA. Tell us other joke, Miuccia. You will always be great and I will always love you but there are some things that spund stupid.

By the way, all the last collections fulfilled with those ugly/silly/lazy/unnecessary logos and prints are saying the oppossite...