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Planet Prada
Miuccia Prada has stamped her name on an era
by alleviating the isolation of creative people. For such sensitive types, the
ultimate luxury is to feel that they are part of a community. This is the
service Prada provides. She has made the world safe for people with
overdeveloped inner lives.
Fashion is one of the techniques she has used
to accomplish this. Her outspoken ambivalence about fashion is another. Some
designers struggle to make a statement. Prada evidently struggles not to. She is
an artist: she would rather hide than speak.
Sometimes, Prada hides behind the art of
others. The Prada Foundation, established in 1995 by Prada and her husband,
Patrizio Bertelli, is a shop window filled with masks. Directed by the legendary
critic and curator Germano Celant, the foundation sponsors exhibitions and other
worthy cultural causes. (The foundation has a Web site: www.fondazioneprada.org.)
In the past decade, it has presented exhibitions by Tom Friedman, Anish Kapoor,
Michael Heizer, Sam Taylor-Wood and Louise Bourgeois, among others. Beautifully
produced catalogs accompany the shows.
Last year the foundation branched out into
philosophy. In November, it financed a new chair in aesthetics at the University
of Vita-Salute San Raffaele in Milan. The position will be held by Massimo
Cacciari, a former mayor of Venice who is perhaps Italy's most celebrated
theorist of art. In the United States, Cacciari is best known for his
scholarship on the art and architecture of Vienna at the turn of the last
century.
Most recently, Prada sponsored the production
of an hourlong film by the Milanese artist Francesco Vezzoli. A dual tribute to
Italian art-house cinema and American kitsch, the film features appearances by
Catherine Deneuve, Jeanne Moreau and Marianne Faithfull. It had its premiere in
Milan last month, along with Vezzoli's ghost theater: an installation of 120
embroidered Charles Rennie Mackintosh chairs.
All this is Prada. Prada, Prada, Prada. As
are the Prada shops designed by Rem Koolhaas and Herzog and de Meuron; the
church in suburban Milan transformed by Dan Flavin into a radiant grotto; and
the 2002 conference on contemporary social challenges organized in collaboration
with a Milanese prison.
That's a lot for a company that started out
as a maker of tastefully understated luggage. Or for a woman who started out as
a political activist for left-wing causes. But I confess I will not be satisfied
until Prada has personally designed an airport. And perhaps even an airline to
go with it. Global transportation infrastructure: this seems to me the direction
in which Prada is headed. From baggage to baggage claim, Prada, Prada, Prada.
With some shopping, art and philosophy along the way.
Prada's cultural projects interest me chiefly
because they help to clarify the personality and intentions of a fashion genius.
No one needs Prada to gain access to the work of Louise Bourgeois or Anish
Kapoor. We admire her for the same reason we have always admired Italians. No
one can match their talent for engineering mythologies of daily life. Since the
1960's, the Italians have exercised that talent only sporadically on the world
stage. Yet those with memories of the postwar decades will not find it difficult
to regard design as a serious form of communication.
Nor should we see any inherent contradiction
between Prada's political sympathies and her success in business. Poets hold
things together. Italian poets -- in design, film and fine art -- have been
working the contradictions between politics and art for a century and more. The
work of Gio Ponti, Joe Colombo, the Castiglione brothers still activate living
memory, even if Milan is no longer the design center it once was. The world is
not what it was. What good are home furnishings for a time when people are
living out of suitcases and scarcely have time to unpack?
Prada is onto something. People want
experiences now more than they want things. They want something other than TV.
They want excuses to be together in social space so they can figure out how the
contemporary city is supposed to work. Things provide the excuses. They are
pretexts for the authentic errand of being outside.
The Prada store that opened in New York's
SoHo district in December 2001 is a prime example of this. For weeks before the
opening, those of us who live downtown found ourselves at the mercy of two
equally unwelcome fantasies. Pundits wanted Lower Manhattan to remain a dead
zone, a backdrop for their moralistic pronouncements. City planners wanted the
place to be a shopping mall thronged with happy-go-lucky but somber tourists.
We kept hearing that the community wanted
this, that the community didn't want that, and after all that irrelevant chatter
it was startling to come face to face with the community itself at the opening
of the Prada store. What the community wanted was to be here.
If there was luxury in the air, it wasn't
coming from the clothes, the fancy in-store technology or even the fabulous
blocklong space. The luxury was making contact with people you hadn't seen
together in one place since 9/11. It was the experience of being with the most
solipsistic people on earth and loving them more than ever.
Georges Bataille argued that all culture is
luxury. It's what we do with the energy that is left over after our material
needs are met. Luxury, in the modern sense, means the transformation of the
commonplace, in Arthur Danto's phrase. It means the creation of value from
unpromising situations. Frank Lloyd Wright created luxury from empty space,
Chanel from jersey sportswear, Louis Kahn from poured concrete. Prada creates it
out of the desire to be rescued from the isolation that a creative life demands.
Francesco Vezzoli creates it from old 60's
movies, television game shows and the desire for continuity with a period he is
too young to have known. Vezzoli's film is inspired by ''Comizi D'Amore,'' a
1964 documentary by Pier Paolo Pasolini. The movie consists of brief interviews,
conducted with people across a broad spectrum of Italian society, on the
subjects of love and sexual mores. Vezzoli recasts Pasolini for the age of
Berlusconi.
Why are so many young artists fascinated by
the 1960's? Because the romantic concept of an avant-garde bohemia breathed its
last gasp then, I suppose. Thereafter, artists and thinkers would have to share
their space with pop musicians, fashion photographers, advertisers and tourists.
The space is getting crowded. But in the labyrinth where ideas take shape, there
is still only room for one - by
Herbert Muscap New
York Times Apr 11 2004
Prada: Luxury Brand With World-Class Anxiety
Teetering on high heels at the top of a stair
overlooking Mercer Street last Friday evening, the willowy Estée Lauder model
Carolyn Murphy surveyed a crowd of fashion's elite and whispered, "This is
so bizarre."
The occasion was a long-anticipated party
celebrating the opening of Prada's 24,000-square-foot store in SoHo. Ms. Murphy
could have been referring to the unseasonal December weather. But she could
easily have been editorializing about the crowd, a throng drawn from a rarefied
sphere where the worlds of business, fashion, film, art and architecture
intersect.
Who else besides Miuccia Prada and Patrizio
Bertelli, her husband and the chief executive of the Prada Group, could lure
Rudolph W. Giuliani, Kevin Spacey, Milla Jovovich and the sculptor Mark di
Suvero to the opening of a dress shop? What other corporate magnates possess the
vision and drive to defy a depressed market and to commission world-class
architects like Rem Koolhaas to erect temples of retailing not just in New York
but also in Tokyo, San Francisco, Paris and Los Angeles? Who, at this grim
moment for local business, could propose anything approaching this couple's
vision for a downtown renewal hinged on a distinctly 21st-century fusion of
mercantile and cultural agendas?
In a sense, the evening was a triumph for the
owners of a privately held company whose fashions of the 1990's transformed a
family luggage firm, founded by Ms. Prada's grandfather Mario in 1913, into a
powerhouse with global sales of $1.4 billion last year. Yet for all the
flashbulb excitement, there was a bizarre cast to the event, an anxiety
detectible by anyone who has followed the fortunes of a seemingly unassailable
firm.
The finger-gnawing nervousness displayed by
Ms. Prada and Mr. Bertelli on Friday could have been chalked up to social
unease. But they also have ample cause to worry. Although Prada sales last year
increased by 56.6 percent, and the company posted 24.9 percent sales growth in
the first half of 2001, it continues to grapple with a $1.6 billion debt load.
It was accumulated over a three-year acquisitions binge, when demand for its
$375 shoes and $1,200 chemises seemed insatiable. Now it is struggling with the
burden of prime real estate bought at market peak, and a sense in some quarters
that the label is in danger of losing its cachet.
Over the course of its buying spree, Prada
acquired controlling interest in Jil Sander, Helmut Lang, Church's shoes,
Azzedine Alaïa, Carshoe and the Genny Group, along with a sizeable hunk of
Fendi.
But an initial public offering the company
planned, to raise money to cover the debt of these acquisitions and to fuel
expansion, was called off twice this year because of the global downturn, most
recently after Sept. 11. Steven Greenberg, the president of the Greenberg Group,
retail analysts, was not alone in noting that the expansions initiated by Mr.
Bertelli would have been next to impossible in a publicly traded firm. "He
has built himself a house of cards," Mr. Greenberg said.
When the stock offering was indefinitely
postponed for the second time, there was talk that Prada would be forced to sell
some of its brands. And by the end of November, it did indeed sell a 25.5.
percent stake in Fendi to L.V.M.H. Moët Hennessey Louis Vuitton for $260
million, and the company was reported in the trade press to be shopping the
labels of both Ms. Sander and Helmut Lang. Last week in New York, Mr. Bertelli,
whose company had denied the brands were for sale, declined to comment. Two days
before the gala opening of the resplendent SoHo store, Prada announced a $624.1
million bond to help offset its huge debt.
As a luxury brand with democratic ambitions,
Prada is caught in marketing limbo. Now that it has expanded to 150 stores
worldwide, with five in Manhattan alone, its survival as a business is
contingent on reaching a broad market — while also retaining the intrinsic
cachet of being the cognoscenti's chosen brand. Some industry analysts see these
goals as conflicting. "They're never going to be the inner-circle kid
anymore," said Donny Deutsch, the chief executive of Deutsch Inc., the
advertising agency, and a longtime Prada customer. "By definition they're
victims of their own success."
Perhaps too pervasive these days to excite
the fickle appetites of the fanatical style makers who established the brand,
Prada has yet to infitrate the consciousness (and pocketbooks) of a mass market.
It is not alone in being an apparel company that cannot afford the luxury of
catering to fashion insiders.
One measure of the extent to which the
Milan-based company falls below the radar of many American women was provided
last week when Women's Wear Daily published the results of a survey to determine
the 100 most recognizable international fashion brands. The study found that,
while Calvin Klein, Gucci, Christian Dior, Chanel and Givenchy were all ranked
in the top 100, Prada's name was nowhere to be found.
At a news conference in June, Mr. Bertelli
played down the effects of the American economic slowdown on a saturated high
end sector. Quick reflexes, he said, "are essential."
Yet it is those very reflexes that critics
have begun calling into question. Among the problems that have beset Mr.
Bertelli's expansion, the best documented are his creative disputes with Ms.
Sander, who, to widespread astonishment, defected in January 2000 from the label
that bore her name. Fashion insiders were surprised when Mr. Bertelli gave
evidence of his management style by taking over not just the Jil Sander business
but, for one season at least, the design of its clothes.
There is also the question of whether the
architectural grandiosity of Prada's retail expansion — the SoHo store alone
is estimated to have cost $40 million, and another Koolhaas- designed showplace
in San Francisco has been delayed for expensive earthquake-proofing —
represents a lapse in business judgment, as some analysts contend. "These
huge capital expenditures can be very telling on your net profitability,"
Mr. Greenberg said.
Prada opened 26 stores around the world in
1998 alone. And while the company shuttered its Prada Sport store on Wooster
Street last week, it will maintain four emporiums and one outpost of Miu Miu,
all within a two-and-a-half-mile stretch from upper Madison Avenue to the new
Prince Street store, where its less than tony neighbors include Zale's and Ann
Taylor Loft.
"We don't feel we're overexposed,"
Mr. Bertelli said last week, when asked if Prada was in danger of glutting the
luxury marketplace. "We have 150 stores around the world — compare that
to our competitors." Chanel has 105. Gucci, which has 153, maintains a
single, hugely profitable outpost in Manhattan on Fifth Avenue.
Despite the financial uncertainties, both Mr.
Bertelli and Ms. Prada seem committed to the notion that experimental store
design will keep vital the company's innovative image. "To go on being
creative," Ms. Prada said, "that is the only way to fight
overexposure."
As a strategy, the creation of elaborate
retail stores is "high risk high reward or no reward," said Carol
Murray, an apparel and footwear analyst in the equity research division of
Solomon Smith Barney. "Successful retail strategies go back to germane,
relevant, must-have products." Why, if its product is so robust, does the
SoHo store bill itself as a purveyor of vintage Prada clothing? A part of the
store has been turned over to the sale of Prada shoes, prints and handbags from
earlier and more influential seasons.
Additionally, among retailers, shoppers and
fashion observers interviewed, there was a sense that the Prada devotee is no
longer as single- minded in her obsession as she was in the label's undisputed
heyday, just a few years back.
"Prada developed the idea that you have
to have that one single handbag each season or that important pair of
shoes," said one major retailer whose store carries Prada. Once famous for
their willingness to go lemminglike from floral appliquéd Mary Jane shoes one
season to a razor-toed Bond girl pump the next, the Prada fan may have moved on.
"These women don't look at Prada and say, `What do I have to have from
Prada?' anymore," the retailer said.
Not since the company engineered the design
feat of transforming a clunky bowling bag into an $800 fashion essential in the
spring of 2000 has Prada scored a major runaway success. If, as analysts
suggest, accessories are the cornerstone of the luxury market, it is worth
noting that it is Balenciaga's grommeted $950 shoulder bag that sold out all
year at both downtown boutiques like Kirna Zabête and Barneys New York
, while the widely copied Prada bowling bags turned up for $299 at Loehmann's,
alongside other markdowns.
"I don't want some brand trophy right
now, especially one as easy as Prada," said Priscilla Glover, an avid
shopper who lives in Paris and New York. "I want something original,
special, beautiful, charming and even precious, and I haven't found that at
Prada in over a year."
Linda Dresner stopped carrying Prada at her
store in Birmingham, Mich., 18 months ago because, Ms. Dresner said, "there
was just too much of it around."
In response to the issue of keeping Prada
fresh, Mr. Bertelli countered: "The novelty we've introduced is that
instead of going on with uniformity, we have created unique and unusual
environments," referring to the highly conceptual store designs. "The
product now is so strong it no longer requires a sameness of spaces."
It would appear that the Prada strategy is to
invigorate the act of shopping by creating museums of consumerism, which like
all good museums today come complete with a self-critique. In an introduction to
a specially published book documenting Mr. Koolhaas's architectural
collaborations with Prada, he offers what could be read as an analysis of the
philosophical problems underlying Prada's growing pains. "In a world where
everything is shopping . . . and shopping is everything . . . what is
luxury?" Mr. Koolhaas asks.
"Luxury is not shopping," Mr.
Koolhaas concludes. - By Guy Trebay and Ginia Bellafante
New York Times
LONDON, May 12 2002— After two false
starts, Prada is expected to say this week that it will proceed with a plan to
sell 30 percent of itself to the public in an initial stock offering, people
close to the company said today.
Patrizio Bertelli, Prada's chief executive,
is expected to provide more details of the plan on Thursday, during a news
conference in Milan. The stock sale, which is scheduled for midsummer and could
value the company at roughly $4 billion, would be one of the largest initial
public offerings this year, and would serve as a barometer for other companies
seeking to tap the public markets. The sale is expected to raise about $1.2
billion.
The proceeds will be used to pay down about
$1.1 billion in debt amassed over the course of a buying spree in which Prada,
the Milan-based fashion house, acquired controlling stakes in a wide range of
companies. They include Jil Sander, Helmut Lang, Church's shoes, Azzedine Alaïa,
Carshoe and the Genny Group, along with a sizable hunk of Fendi, which it later
sold to LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton.
Despite an economic slowdown and the Sept. 11
terrorist attacks, events that caused Prada to cancel plans to go public on two
previous occasions, the company continued to open lavish stores. Its latest in
SoHo, designed by the architect Rem Koolhaas, cost an estimated $40 million.
Prada now owns 150 boutiques in Manhattan, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Paris,
Milan and Tokyo.
When the stock offering was indefinitely
postponed for a second time, Prada found itself strapped for cash. By the end of
November, it sold a 25.5 percent stake in Fendi to LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis
Vuitton for $260 million. And in December, Deutsche Bank underwrote a $624.1
million bond sale that can be converted into Prada shares if the company goes
public within three years.
Deutsche Bank and BNP Paribas are jointly
underwriting Prada's stock sale.
The designer Miuccia Prada and her husband,
Mr. Bertelli, who control Prada, transformed a family luggage business, founded
by Ms. Prada's grandfather Mario in 1913, into a world class brand by selling
must-have shoes and handbags like the $800 bowling ball bag that was a fashion
essential in 2000.
Aside from overextending itself financially,
Prada's expansion has been besieged by other problems, notably Mr. Bertelli's
management style. For instance, he clashed with Ms. Sander, who shocked the
fashion world when she defected in January 2000 from the label that bears her
name.
Luxury goods companies in general have
struggled since Sept. 11, when many consumers held off making large or
extravagant purchases. Mr. Bertelli indicated earlier this year that demand was
starting to pick up, noting that Prada's sales had risen by double-digits in the
United States and Japan. He is expected to provide more details about the
company's performance this week. -
New
York Times
The New Prada Store NYC
It used to be that a visit to a high-end
fashion boutique meant snooty, pencil-thin sales representatives and stark,
minimalist design. It wasn't much of a sensory experience, but it didn't need to
be. Customers came for the clothes; the surroundings were peripheral.
Yesterday's opening of Prada's
23,000-square-foot flagship store in New York may have changed all that. The
SoHo store promises to be as exciting for gearheads and art lovers as it is for
fashionistas. Designed by experimental architect Rem Koolhaas, the store
combines art, technology and upscale fashion to create a unique retail
experience.
Not so long ago, an architect of Koolhaas's
stature rarely designed retail outlets. But this past October, celebrity
architect Frank Gehry completed the Issey Miyake flagship store in New York's
Tribeca district. Koolhaas, who will soon join Gehry in the upper echelon of
architects who have built Guggenheim museums, is apparently as enthusiastic
about designing for Prada as the company is about having him. He's designing
similar outlets in San Francisco and Los Angeles and has published Projects for
Prada Part 1, a book detailing his plans for the company.
Highlights of the New York store include a
hanging installation of an abstract city as well as a giant mural by German
photographer Andreas Gursky, fresh from an exhibition at the Museum of Modern
Art. But while the concept of store-as-gallery may have been done before, it's
the technological gadgets in the store that are grabbing all the attention, even
if sometimes the effect seems more tilted to showboating than practicality.
The transparent glass doors on the dressing
rooms, for instance, appear to be designed for voyeurs. But customers who would
rather not undress in front of New York's fashion elite need not worry: Upon
entry, the liquid-crystal display doors turn opaque.
The dressing rooms are also fitted with video
screens instead of mirrors, allowing slow-motion modelling of potential
purchases. Should you decide to buy, you can use the store's computers to find
recommended matching items. As well, the "style scanners" can
instantly check for items in your size and create a personal account on the
company's Web site, which you can later access from home.
The infrastructure of the store is similarly
futuristic. Transparent display cases hang from a network of motorized tracks on
the ceiling. The push of a button reorganizes the entire store, moving all the
displays to one side for parties or fashion shows.
The boutique will need all the technical
wizardry and artistic glamour it can muster. Prada is said to have spent copious
sums of money on the store, though when asked how much it all cost, CEO Patrizio
Bertelli would only tell reporters "the right amount." The SoHo
district is a few blocks north of the ruins of the World Trade Center, and
pedestrian traffic has dropped off dramatically since the terrorist attacks.
The company remains unbowed, however. The
store's prospects are being carefully watched, and it's not just the fashion
world that's holding its breath. Even Popular Science, the old-school geek
periodical of choice, has profiled the store. The magazine fearlessly hopes the
store's technology catches on, making "an afternoon of clothes shopping as
much fun as a trip to Circuit City."
- Saturday
Post article by Benjamin Errett
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