Miuccia Prada wears a vintage look from her debut fall 1988 collection.
MAGAZINE: It was November and a little windy on the balcony of the Ca’ Corner della Regina, the 18th-century palazzo that is home to the Prada Foundation in Venice, where Miuccia Prada was posing for photographs against the backdrop of the Grand Canal. She clasped a red silk coat (from her very first collection in 1988) over a citrine sweater, bright and sharp against the gray sky and the terra-cotta, ochre, and verdigris of deliquescent Venice. She wore no discernible makeup; her long blond-and-auburn hair was unstyled and hung in soft curls at her shoulders. When it fanned in the breeze, she joked about looking very 1990s, like Cindy Crawford in a wind machine.
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Afterward, several of us gathered around a table for lunch. Mrs. Prada, as she is deferentially known, took off the two grand gold necklaces (one of lions’ heads) and the other medallions she was wearing and laid them on an adjacent chair, as if relinquishing the heavy chains of office, and began, Italian-mama style, to spoon rice onto our plates. The lunch was simple: chicken patties, braised endive, spinach, and salad. The vegetables, she said, came from her garden in Tuscany—oh, yes, she nodded, she takes a close interest in the planting. There is not much, I would come to understand, that Prada does not take a close interest in.
Prada, now 74, reminded me of the late Queen of England: a diminutive older lady, magnificently costumed, who commands a regal presence with a softly-spoken manner and a genuine curiosity about both things and people. She is surprisingly warm, self-deprecating, and has a gentle, musical laugh. We discussed the current exhibition at the palazzo, “Everybody Talks About the Weather,” a thought-provoking interplay of historical paintings, contemporary artworks, and scientific information about the climate crisis. Prada lamented that it was difficult to find curators who could link art and academic inquiry to put on the kind of ambitious, multidisciplinary exhibitions she wanted the foundation to show. She had been struggling, for example, to find the right person to oversee an exhibition on feminism: Who could unite such a disparate field—and how best to communicate complex and challenging concepts?
“I want culture to be attractive,” she said.
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SWOW SWAG
