Miuccia Prada World Domination
The history-making announcement was delivered with the cool cadence of a veteran sharpshooter nailing a bullseye. Early on April 10, Prada Group purchased Versace for nearly $1.5 billion, absorbing a major Italian luxury rival in a show of sheer Darwinian might.
Prada Group’s press release, issued shortly after, was shop talk sauced up with a dash of modest chest-beating, evinced by phrasing like "[Versace] displays strong potential" and "significant untapped growth." Translation: It ain't broke. But we'll fix it.
Thing is, when Prada says it, I believe it. This is as close as humble Prada will ever get to overtly asserting its status as fashion's 10,000-pound gorilla, a position rightly earned on the strength of Miuccia Prada's genius. It’s Prada’s world. All these other brands are just living in it.
The LYST Index's recent rankings of luxury's hottest labels put Prada Group's Prada and Miu Miu imprints in the top spots not once, not twice, not three times but FOUR times throughout 2024, with items as understated as Miu Miu's ultra-quotidian fleece going supernova.
Succinctly, 2024 belonged to Miu Miu and Prada, in that order.
Miu Miu, Prada's poppy sibling line, is setting trends once considered inconceivable. Low-rise skirts! Low-rise sneakers! Dudes caring about womenswear! Like Prada, which continues to turn out a quietly brainy form of luxury, Miu Miu achieved this feat by balancing real-deal great clothes with savvy youth culture courtship (i.e. influencers influencing at influential events).
Meanwhile, empowered by record growth during a prolonged luxury slump that's dragging down nearly every other luxury conglomerate's bottom lines, Prada is muscling in on the world's ritziest real estate. Beyond the opening of sizeable new stores, Prada triumphantly (but not yet officially) captured the eatery that's long sat underneath its flagship in New York's SoHo neighborhood, a space likely to be turned into America's first Prada Café and likely the work of Lorenzo Bertelli, Miuccia's son.
It’s all happening under Prada’s roof. Miuccia Prada may be 75 years young but she’s also overseeing the next generation.
Bertelli is the unlikely Prada scion puppetmastering Prada Group behind the scenes — industry sources say that he fueled the Versace acquisition. And Dario Vitale, former Miu Miu artistic director, is heading up Versace — a testament to the potency of today’s Miu Miu — while former designer Donatella shifts to chief brand ambassador, a move that effectively unites two of fashion’s most powerful women designers within a single conglomerate.
And then, there’s Raf Simons. Bear in mind that Simons was the preeminent menswear mind of his generation, a veritable titan of industry. He could’ve done anything, he could’ve kept the Raf Simons brand going forever. Instead, Simons folded his eponymous line into the greater Prada narrative, a testament to the brilliant magnetic pull of Miuccia Prada.
No other working designer so overtly grasps the appeal of grounded garments — some might call them "good clothes."
Miuccia is both impressively prescient — Miu Miu sent biker boots down the runway in 2022 and two years later, they were everywhere — and guided by an almost obstinate adherence to great garments.
Great garments like cargo-pocketed shirts and pre-faded workwear jackets, stuff that's so good that you just wanna reach through the screen and grab it for yourself. To the layperson, Prada's no-nonsense luxury may read as "boring" but a trained eye grasps that, like Brancusi, Miuccia Prada is a master of refinement. She just hacks and hacks and hacks away at all the extraneous detritus that gunks up much of luxury until the raw beauty of clothing is laid bare.
And Miu Miu, well, it's Miu Miu. Miuccia unfiltered. Fun preppy stuff, washed-out workwear, school uniforms gone askew, the classic American blue jean, a dash of surfer cool. It's very much the pricier, more purposeful version of the stuff that kids are thrifting on TikTok and YouTube.
Unlike most of luxury — old people trying to sell clothes in the language of young people — Miu Miu is the very essence of not out of touch. That's not because of any stylistic pivot, though. This is merely culture circling back to where Miuccia Prada has always been.
That's the power of Miuccia Prada. And it's always been present, ever since Miuccia Prada's first collection of shockingly contemporary, imminently wearable luxury wearables almost four decades ago.
It's just that most people weren't paying attention until it became too obvious to ignore.
