Miuccia Prada Doesn't Own a Computer
And other key takeaways from the designer’s chat with Raf Simons.
In the realm of luxury, Miuccia Prada is well-known for remaining behind the scenes, encouraging critics to take her output on its own merits rather than breaking down seasonal influences by way of lengthy press releases. However, in a piece for The New York Times, the reclusive creative has allowed fans a little closer into her world by way of a chat with her co-creative director at Prada, Raf Simons, published mere days before the duo’s debut menswear presentation.
Encompassing a breadth of subjects, the two’s freewheeling conversation ranges from discussion of their recent runway presentations to personal habits. For instance, Prada and Simons’ brainstorming rarely takes place in video chats, as Prada finds video “distracting.” In fact, the 71-year-old designer admits that she doesn’t even own a computer.
“On the phone, I am more concentrated,” she says. “We can talk theories. Like for the first season both of us felt we didn’t want to tell stories. He was interested in defining an aesthetic of Prada, very simplified, and I was on the same track.”
This design ethos aligned with Simons’ own proclivities, he reveals, as the Belgian designer admits that he “had never bought a piece from any of” the brands he’d worked at prior to Prada. That means that Raf never wore Jil Sander, Dior or Calvin Klein prior to working at each establishment.
However, “I have been a Prada fan, a Prada watcher, a Prada wearer. I wore only Prada for, like, 15 years, because until a few years ago, I always felt it weird to walk around in my own clothes.”
Both creative directors touch on elements of Simons’ debut Prada show (including the wrap motif) before pivoting to predictions of a post-COVID-19 fashion industry. “The one lesson I think fashion will not learn from this … is that it should be less greedy,” asserts Simons. “It became too much this economic machine. … Fashion became pop, and the winners now are the ones that scream hardest, not the ones that speak most intelligently.”
Prada agrees with her confidant, acknowledging that “we are in a capitalist world. … It’s easy to say consume less, produce less, but then we need to be ready to have less jobs.” Even in the face of blunt truths however, she admits that she still “feel[s] optimistic.”
Read the entire dialogue on The New York Times‘ website.
It’s not all gloomy for Prada, of course, which has seen booming sales as it introduces the Spring/Summer 2021 campaign.
