Woman I admire - Muccia Prada
Miuccia Prada is one of fashion industry's leaders. She uses clothes to express her ideas. Although she finds it hard coming as an intellectual with a Phd in political science to come to terms that she is a fashion designer.
Prada manages to convert a private obsesssion with things like kitsch, uniforms, wallpaper, computers, and even trash into an international symbol of cool. And,
Prada doesn't sew, knot, sketch. She is not that kind of designer. Instead she surrounds herself with talented people whose job is to translate her themes, concepts, and -especially- her taste into clothes that bear the Prada name.
Often, she will focus on a colour, a texture, a memory. Once she locks in her seasonal passion, she can tell her people what to do and show them how to do it. An unusual approach, but it has made her one of the most influential designers in the world.
Prada offers far more than clothes, she is trying to sell people a better, hipper version of themselves. She doesn't simply sell five hundred dollar scarves; she sells the world view that comes with buying such objects.
Here are a few quotes of Muccia that I obtained from various sources.
“I realise how powerful and important clothes are, especially for women,” she says. “They have to be useful for your life, of course, but they must also express your individual sentiment.” That Prada accepts that all fashion is role-play is what makes her such a force. She understands that the job of the truly ground-breaking designer is to decide on the roles, dress them and then present them in such a way that people all over the world want to join the cast.
Prada realised that choosing the inappropriate is what moves creativity forward. In the 19th century, impressionism was seen as inappropriate. So was surrealism, some 40 years later. Likewise, Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst. The list is long and important. These are the people who have changed our thinking for ever.
“If you have something to tell, you must do it through an idea. For me, that is always through clothes,” she says. “This leads us into considerations of imagination, desire, the longing to be beautiful and the obsessions of narcissism. These are big subjects.”
Prada herself makes an unlikely éminence grise. She is neither dowdy, nor overwhelmingly chic. In fact, she looks entirely normal. Her figure is that of a woman in her fifties. Her hair is cut like most other women’s hair. She rarely wears make-up. Contrast her with another Italian icon, Donatella Versace, and you realise that she is a fashion outsider. Certainly, she avoids socialising with most other designers and runs a mile from social events. As she said to me, years ago: “I am a wife and a mother” — she has two teenage boys — “and I have many more interests than fashion. Fashion is just my job.”
More indepth read.
http://www.michaelspecter.com/pdf/prada.pdf
Prada manages to convert a private obsesssion with things like kitsch, uniforms, wallpaper, computers, and even trash into an international symbol of cool. And,
Prada doesn't sew, knot, sketch. She is not that kind of designer. Instead she surrounds herself with talented people whose job is to translate her themes, concepts, and -especially- her taste into clothes that bear the Prada name.
Often, she will focus on a colour, a texture, a memory. Once she locks in her seasonal passion, she can tell her people what to do and show them how to do it. An unusual approach, but it has made her one of the most influential designers in the world.
Prada offers far more than clothes, she is trying to sell people a better, hipper version of themselves. She doesn't simply sell five hundred dollar scarves; she sells the world view that comes with buying such objects.
Here are a few quotes of Muccia that I obtained from various sources.
“I realise how powerful and important clothes are, especially for women,” she says. “They have to be useful for your life, of course, but they must also express your individual sentiment.” That Prada accepts that all fashion is role-play is what makes her such a force. She understands that the job of the truly ground-breaking designer is to decide on the roles, dress them and then present them in such a way that people all over the world want to join the cast.
Prada realised that choosing the inappropriate is what moves creativity forward. In the 19th century, impressionism was seen as inappropriate. So was surrealism, some 40 years later. Likewise, Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst. The list is long and important. These are the people who have changed our thinking for ever.
“If you have something to tell, you must do it through an idea. For me, that is always through clothes,” she says. “This leads us into considerations of imagination, desire, the longing to be beautiful and the obsessions of narcissism. These are big subjects.”
Prada herself makes an unlikely éminence grise. She is neither dowdy, nor overwhelmingly chic. In fact, she looks entirely normal. Her figure is that of a woman in her fifties. Her hair is cut like most other women’s hair. She rarely wears make-up. Contrast her with another Italian icon, Donatella Versace, and you realise that she is a fashion outsider. Certainly, she avoids socialising with most other designers and runs a mile from social events. As she said to me, years ago: “I am a wife and a mother” — she has two teenage boys — “and I have many more interests than fashion. Fashion is just my job.”
More indepth read.
http://www.michaelspecter.com/pdf/prada.pdf
posted by Wise Wife at 8:48 PM
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