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Radical Chic | The New Yorker

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Last June, Men’s Fashion Week in Milan took place a few days after Miuccia Prada and her husband, Patrizio Bertelli, who runs the business end of their empire, had raised $2.1 billion with a long-delayed, much ballyhooed initial public offering on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Both the I.P.O. and Prada’s runway show—a collection of Day-Glo floral prints and nerdy plaids—inspired complaints from Giorgio Armani. “Fashion today is in the hands of the banks and of the stock market and not of its owners,” he told the press. He went on to scold Prada for “bad taste that becomes chic.” Her clothes, he added, are “sometimes ugly.” Armani’s perception was hardly novel, and Prada might not have disagreed—“I fight against my good taste,” she has said—though she also might have pointed out that when bankers want a fashion insurance policy they buy one of Armani’s suits. He is the champion of the risk-averse, and Prada has always slyly perverted the canons of impeccability that his brand embodies.

Save this story Save this story Miuccia Prada, left, photographed by Brigitte Lacombe, will share the stage with Elsa Schiaparelli at the Costume Institute. Photograph by (Right): Condé Nast Archive Last June, Men’s Fashion Week in Milan took place a few days after Miuccia Prada and her husband, Patrizio Bertelli, who runs the business end of their empire, had raised $2.1 billion with a long-delayed, much ballyhooed initial public offering on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Both the I.P.O. and Prada’s runway show—a collection of Day-Glo floral prints and nerdy plaids—inspired complaints from Gio

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