THE ONLY CONSTANT IS CHANGE

The mother of reinvention and a continual bellwether, Miuccia Prada has accomplished the greatest transformation of all.

By JON ROTH
Photography JOANNA PIOTROWSKA

It was the kind of news that sends shockwaves through the fashion industry and out into the culture at large. In February of 2020, Prada announced that Raf Simons would be joining Miuccia Prada as Co-Creative Director of the fashion house. In an era when designers often make revolving-door entrances and exits at the top brands, the idea of a co-directorship between two of fashion’s heaviest hitters was met with excitement, intrigue, and lots of speculation. No doubt, Prada and Simons share a heady intellectualism and a disinterested cool that’s always appealed to serious students of style. But how would they work together. What would “new Prada” really look like?

Then again, has Prada ever really felt old?

Like any fashion house, Prada has changed with the times. Not every look from decades past could step seamlessly into the world of today. But it would be difficult to single out any collections that felt stale from the start. That’s part of the genius of Miuccia Prada. The designer is never one to churn out more of the same year after year. Instead, she’s in a constant cycle of reinvention, always altering and adjusting the house codes she’s created. A woman allergic to what’s “expected”, Prada has kept her family’s house in the top tier of the fashion world for more than four decades by following a simple formula: always tweak the formula.

Prada as we know it today began with Miuccia, who came to her grandfather’s company in 1970 and inherited it in 1978. Prior to her reign, the house was largely known as a leather goods company and an importer of British steamer trunks. Founded in 1913, it was named official supplier to the Italian Royal Household. Then, in a move that presaged a lifetime of risk-taking, Miuccia decided to turn Prada’s upscale history upside down.

“Back then, I didn’t really like anything I saw,” she said. “It all just looked so old and bourgeois and boring. Back then, I just wanted to search for the absolute opposite of what was already out there.” So instead of leaning into the luxury of leather, she instead chose to create bags and backpacks with nylon - specifically pocono, a military-grade material. Her Vela backpack, made from this tactical, water-proof, synthetic silk alternative, set the tone for a new chapter for the house. Rather than rest on the laurels of the past, Miuccia had staked her claim to a new kind of fashion: one with industrial roots, minimal leanings, and a decided irreverence toward what had come before.

In the years to come, Miuccia’s risk-taking would pay off. The house moved from backpacks to bags to womenswear, seeking out wholesale accounts and opening up boutiques across the world. Arriving on the heels of the psychedelic ‘60s and disco ‘70s, Miuccia’s designs appealed for their difference; they were streamlined, structured, often rendered in basic black and white. By the 1990s this anti-fashion approach to fashion truly hit its stride, and Prada became the last word in subtly subversive dressing.

The apotheosis of that subversion came in 1996, when the designer decided to switch gears again. Her women’s runway show that year replaced uber-minimal severity with a retro-inspired, buttoned-up sexlessness. The colors were lime green and muddy tan, the patterns were blown-up faux tweed, and florals and checks that recalled hotel upholstery. The shoes were chunky and functional. The reviewers called it “ugly chic,” and this new proposition helped push the zeitgeist in a new direction. Miuccia had traded industrial simplicity for an unexpected nerdiness so uncool it circled right back around to cutting edge.

If Prada is a bellwether for fashion, it’s because Miuccia takes stock of the prevailing winds, and immediately heads in the other direction. “Instinctively, I go the opposite way to consensus,” she has said. “I’m deeply against cliché or the usual or what everybody else does. If I see a black dress, I want to do red, if I see red, I want to do black. The opposite of beauty is ugliness, so I’d do ugly.”

This aversion to sameness puts the house of Prada in a constant state of flux, even when it’s simply reacting against itself. This makes it hard to pin down the exact brand DNA. It’s very difficult to define “Prada-ness”. “Sometimes I’ve been criticized by the company,” Miuccia said. “They said, ‘Valentino is Valentino, Hermès is Hermès. Clear, simple, one idea.’ So I said, ‘Change the designer then.'”

No one is interested in calling that bluff. So rather than try to define the Prada aesthetic, Miuccia chooses to refract it through the lens of her collaborators. Historically, it’s rare for her to collaborate on a Prada collection, but in terms of presenting the clothing, Prada’s collaborative nature has deep roots. When it comes to physical spaces, this includes a long working relationship with architect Rem Koolhaas and his OMA/AMO agency. The firm created the Fondazione Prada in Milan, Prada’s ‘Transformer’ space in Seoul, and sets for many of their recent runway shows. A cineaste as well, Prada has commissioned directors like David O. Russell, Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola to create films for the house.

After a decades-long relationship with photographer Stephen Meisel, Prada’s campaign photography has changed course as well with the introduction of Willy Vanderperre in 2017, to help lens the brands newly diversified Prada365 marketing effort, and again in 2020, when five photographer and directors were enlisted to capture Miuccia’s final solo collection, ‘The Show that Never Happened’. Vanderperre, along with Juergen Teller, Joanna Piotrowksa, Martine Syms and Terence Nance, each captured that moment in their own style, again underscoring the multiplicity of the Prada look.

All this teamwork, and yet Miuccia has maintained firm control over design duties at the house. “I want to be good myself. I don’t want to collaborate in my job,” she has said. Which is why her partnership with Raf Simons came as a surprise to so many. But then, she is a woman enamored of change, and what bigger change, after decades designing alone, than to invite someone else to join her?

“We like each other, we respect each other,” Miuccia said of the new partnership with Simons, then added drily, “I was sometimes criticized for not doing collaborations, so now I am doing one.” The two designers already have a long relationship. When Jil Sander was still a part of the Prada Group, Prada offered Simons creative directorship of the brand of which he credits the role for introducing him to womenswear. And there’s an affinity to their tastes that suggests a fruitful partnership in the offing: both take an intellectual approach to fashion, and both have an abiding love for modern art. Even so, neither is particularly used to compromise, which had industry veterans wondering how successful, or long-lived, this collaboration would really be.

Early indications are very promising with an exciting display of unity of vision, and also a new energy: the kind of fashion frisson that comes off two creative forces rubbing shoulders. Old favorites came back to light: nylon, of course, but now in an updated, recycled version called Re-Nylon. And the ugly chic upholstery patterns made a second bow as well. And the shared loves of both designers - a deft hand with clutch coats, and bomber jackets, for example - now shine especially bright.

What about fashion’s constant desire for the next, new thing? “New is the nightmare of every single designer, probably,” Miuccia said, before adding that the obsession seemed to fall back during our year of COVID-19. Simons picked up the thread, “I think when you are in it for a long time, let’s say a few decades, it’s important to be able to refresh your own body of work.”

Savvy as ever, Miuccia must have known the time was right to bring about this ultimate refresh at the house of Prada. It’s no coincidence that change, alteration, and adjustment are now front and center at the house. “We play with the idea of the classic - we subvert it, we trans-mutate it,” Miuccia said. “Often, it is very simple - through new materials, a different cut or context, something obvious, eternal, normal - with a simple gesture, it can transform. That is what I truly love, in fashion.” In fashion, and in life as well.