The Magnificent Mrs Prada

The new Torre art space at the Prada Foundation reflects the brilliance of the woman behind it and houses a personal collection that bucks convention, much like its avant-garde owner. In a rare interview, Justine Picardie meets Miuccia Prada, a globally revered fashion designer whose true passions appear to be politics and art

- Justine Picardie

It was a sunlit Italian summer’s morning when I visited the Torre, the newly opened art space at the Prada Foundation, in preparation for my meeting with Miuccia Prada herself later that day. The Milan sky was such a bright blue that the pristine white concrete walls of the Torre seemed even more dazzling in contrast, and the 60-metre-high structure looked like a gleaming sculpture, rising above the group of buildings that make up the Prada Foundation, designed by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas.

As it happens, I had already seen the Torre by night, six months previously, at the Prada show in February, where the collection had been presented on the fourth floor of the building. The construction was not quite finished at that point, which added a hint of danger to the proceedings; a black mirrored floor appeared to give way to a void of darkness, while beyond the vast floor-to-ceiling windows the audience could see the city skyline illuminated by neon Prada signs, hovering like cartoon UFOs (a spider, a monkey, a dinosaur among them). As I sat and watched the show itself — which was filmed by a sinister drone — it occurred to me that the experience was more akin to watching a piece of performance art. These were not seductive clothes that we were seeing; instead, the parade of models wore rubber boots, fluorescent padding, utilitarian layers of workwear over tulle dresses, with ID cards attached, as if in a sci-fi dystopia.