Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Prada And Were Too Uncool To Ask: The Unauthorized Biography

Young, radical Miuccia showing up at Milan's peace demonstrations and marches for women's rights during the early 1970s wearing YSL, then proceeding to wash the dishes after a communal dinner with her comrades.

Young Miuccia showing up at a trade fair to check the bags created by tall, funny-looking Tuscan dude: "You're ripping off my bags", she tells her future husband Patrizio Bertelli.

Miuccia the opera lover still singing for her closest friends her favorite arias from her favorite opera, "Tosca".

Miuccia choosing the most radical architects to design her stores, because she can. Maybe the stores eventually are so unique that the clothes are neither that visible nor well-lit, because maybe the stores end up looking more like art galleries? It's OK. Because she can.

Miuccia choosing the coolest photographers, so what if the clothes aren't that visible in the ads? The images are striking and memorable and that's what counts.

Miuccia the art lover who created a big Foundation to promote modern art that quickly became one of Europe's leading cultural centers.

Miuccia and Patrizio making some funny business choices, getting badly burned by the post 9/11 downturn, getting a huge load of debt to finance their revolutionary company and keep it afloat in very unrevolutionary times.

Miuccia's husband Patrizio smashing the mirrors in Miu Miu's NYC store "because they make everybody look fat". Patrizio who acquires the House of Fendi and plans to immediately fire its creative director, Karl Lagerfeld.

This and much, much more is in Gian Luigi Paracchini's "Vita Prada", (Prada life, published in Italy by Baldini Castoldi Dalai), the unauthorized biography of Miuccia and the history of her rise to power, that came out in Italy just before Xmas and became a sudden best-seller and the book everybody's in the fashion business here is talking about.

A special correspondent for Italy's largest daily newspaper, Corriere della Sera, Paracchini put an impressive amount of research in the book, after covering the fashion business for 12 years in Corriere's pages. It's a wonderful book -- and it's even more wonderful what Miuccia Prada herself had to say about the unauthorized best-seller with the usual ballsiness and sense of humor: "I don't think I'm as big a bitch as you think, but I had fun reading it".

Comments

[vale]

Can't wait for the movie: "The Devil IS Prada!"

[Dina]

She's my idol. Her clothes aren't too bad either :)

[Thomas]

When in English?

[Richard]

Anyone know when we can expect the book to be released in America? Sounds like a "must read". Love that woman!