Power of One | circle of influence Miuccia Prada

  Miuccia Prada is a fashion designer by profession, but it is also an art curator, film producer, avid feminist architect resulting in inconsistent consumers and unapologetic socialist. Meet the modern woman.

She went dark when I discovered the store in Milan, which belonged to the grandfather of Miuccia Prada. Near the cathedral and in a glass and marble gateway called Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, the business is now like a beacon in a little fantasy of modern Italian style and wealth. Outside, there could be a industrial decline and migration, but here are the lights fantastic and the people are drawn there like moths. In the first scene of the classic Visconti film "Rocco and His Brothers" to try the Parondis from the south, a new life in Milan. Enter the tram as it passes through the dark city and all they can see, it is business. "Rocco", one of the brothers, Alain Delon says, "watch shops and lights. It's like daylight."

Mario Prada has the leather. In 1918, his collection includes a bag of lizard with marcasite and one loop of lapis lazuli. The highlight of 1927 was a toad skin wallet and money. When he died, his daughter took over, and finally she brought her youngest daughter, Miuccia smile that was known to the family as Miu Miu. In 1978, she designed a black nylon backpack that would take place later the world by storm. With her husband, Patrizio Bertelli, she has turned the company into a much-admired, eccentric retailer of luxury in a contemporary design powerhouse with sales of more than $ 5 billion. The famous brand Prada, the women's clothing and men's clothing contains much copied - "The job is something interesting to do with ideas," said Miuccia, "and when I copied a damn" - and the group includes other brands like Miu Miu and Church English Shoe Company.

Ms. Prada, as it is called, is about 5 feet 4 inches, usually gives little away, but when I met her, I find a little willing to put their puzzle to open it. Some designers look for trends, but Prada is in fact the trend, season after season, so that other spiders on the heels as she spreads her unique vision of what can be a woman. People do not stop to say, "What does she look" And the secret is in the way connects with the spirit of the age to be found: it is a remarkable capitalist philosopher with a brilliant flair for the modern desire. She is a designer is not afraid to get their hands on what people get people asking strange questions, then again with very elegant answers.

"Fashion is about how we made every day," wrote Ms. Prada said. It was in my head when I met at its headquarters in Via Bergamo. The rain was falling heavily when Prada came in a dark blue Audi and quickly rushed in a gray building. She was charming from the moment we sat down and filled, you might say, with the simple faith of laughter, the joy of certainty. But Prada like to live in contradictions. This may be the thing that makes it capable of creating, threatening, interesting work to be: In her heart she is also afraid of failure and success.

"When I began the worst kind and location was to be when you were a feminist left., It was terrible. I had an injury, yes, I've always had a problem with it," she said. "I think I .. felt not to do something even more important, more political guilty in a sense, I am now with these other activities, "later adding," I'm not interested in the figure, and I'm not in a position to this complicated ..

I'm working on the images of women that I want to analyze. I'm not really interested in clothes and style. "