Miuccia Prada: A Woman At Odds

Miuccia Prada is a woman at odds with an industry she is leading: she loves to dress up, hates the frivolity of fashion, yet produces some of the most intellectually charged collections of every season – endlessly pushing and challenging the definition of beauty.

- Gordon NG

Perhaps the most powerful woman in fashion is Miuccia Prada. You know the story: the Italianborn woman went to mime school, got a PhD in political science from the University of Milan, then joined Fratelli Prada (the family business) out of a sense of obligation. Serendipitous commitments sometimes produce the best results and Mrs Prada has since led the brand towards its status as a global fashion powerhouse, luxury icon and, for industry devotees, an endless source of powerful and intelligent collections.

Rare is the designer who shows us things we recoil from yet feel drawn to. Prada collections are famously called ugly-chic, and it’s interesting to explore the connotations of “ugly” where high fashion is concerned. The ugly Miuccia Prada proposes is polarising. “When I started, everybody hated what I was doing except a few clever people,” she says, in an interview with Alexander Fury of the Independent. Indeed, dissecting a new season’s catwalk offerings are a challenge. The styling, by Olivier Rizzo, never plays on the commercial safe-side of New York, the cerebral avant-garde of London, the glamour and sex of Milan, or the refined romanticism of Paris. Instead, what one commonly gets from Prada is a whoop of confusion and the inexplicable draw of desire. Unlike the sometimes threatening, maddening and manic genius of creators like Alexander McQueen or John Galliano, Prada produces with a silver-spooned rebelliousness that stems not from the gut but the mind. A lifelong understanding of luxury combined with her nonconformity results in collections that challenge the here and now and offer us what could and should be. Therein lies her power and talent: to discomfort you and confront you with ideas not yet conventional, though bound to be commonplace, give or take a season or two.