“I like to push, because in the push you become more creative, more intelligent,” Prada told me.
I asked Patrizio Bertelli why his partnership with his wife had been so successful. “I ask myself the same question all the time,” he said. “We never worked because we were anxious to become famous or rich—we worked for the pleasure of doing something that was interesting and constructive, and to enjoy it, to have fun.”
Their two halves—one creative, the other commercial—have forged a powerhouse global brand in the span of a single lifetime. Prada is now listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange, though the family still owns 80 percent of the business. The couple, now both in their 70s, have been careful in planning a smooth succession. A new CEO, Andrea Guerra, was installed just last year, and Lorenzo, who gave up a professional rally racing career with his own Fuck Matiè team to join the company in 2017, is now in charge of technology, marketing, sustainability, and the company’s new fine jewelry division.
In 2020, Prada stunned the fashion world by announcing that Raf Simons, the enormously respected Belgian designer, would come aboard to codesign the label alongside Miuccia Prada as an equal creative partner, collaborator, and instigator.
When I asked Simons why he had said yes, he answered me in one word: “Miuccia—as simple as that.”
Like his collaborator and creative partner, Simons didn’t go to fashion school (he studied industrial design) and easily admits that “my interest in art is much bigger than my interest in fashion.” The two had long been admirers of each other’s work, and both spoke of the need for reality, practicality, meaning, and, yes, usefulness in their collections. And though their collaboration began with the understanding that if either really hated the other’s idea, they wouldn’t do it, they both told me that they have found working together nothing less than a meeting of minds.
“It’s going very well,” Prada said. “We have the same taste, and most of the time we have exactly the same idea. He’s a very nice person and intellectually honest—the most important quality.”
“It clicked in an incredible way,” said Simons. “I think that we are [both] dialogue people—she likes collaborating, she likes to work with people—needs it, I think. Anything can be a starting point, whether we love it or hate it or think it’s silly or funny or sad or stupid or political.”
