MIUCCIA SPEAKS: In a rare interview, Miuccia Prada spoke her mind in the columns of Friday’s La Repubblica on issues including fashion and politics.
While maintaining that Italy continues to be the best country in the world in terms of production, the designer cautioned against the dispersion of talent and brands. “With the sale of our luxury labels to foreigners, our entire system risks falling into second league,” said Prada, worried that companies and their workers could end up becoming mere contractors or manufacturers. “Because if our brands cross our borders, the credit, glamour, fame and decision making is in the hands of others, and we are abandoned, downgraded,” she remarked.
In fact, the designer believes that important creative talents have started to snub Italy and opt for Paris. “You can’t blame them,” she said, citing as an example Raf Simons, who was “already highly considered” when working at Jil Sander, but is now working for Dior in Paris, where “his value will further be emphasized.”
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Prada partly blamed the media, accusing the Italian press of not taking fashion seriously, considering it “frivolous,” without realizing how relevant it is in terms of sales and employment. She also pointed a finger at intellectuals and left-leaning politicians, who “remain diffident toward wealth and glamour,” while money, she said, can actually help “organize art, culture and fashion.”
Made in Italy is no longer enough, according to the designer, as the impression outside Italy is that the country has “less resources, culture, protagonists, ideas, vitality and money,” and that being less attractive, “fashion goes elsewhere, looking for the best.” Prada admitted that she herself, “looking for that attraction that is called glamour,” has chosen Paris to show her Miu Miu line.
“We live in a weak cultural world, we are a country that has never wanted or known how to protect and promote its immense landscape and artistic patrimony,” she added.