Rome's La Repubblica ran a monster interview with Miuccia Prada, the legendary Italian fashion designer who creates, season after season, coveted collections with heartbreaking (and heart stealing) stilettos and is the protagonist of an upcoming costume exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum, Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations.
Miuccia didn't fall short of past character attributions such as "cerebral and iconoclastic" and "intelligent in a way that other designers couldn't even dream of," and the interview was a nice change-up from the predictable questions about wearing Yves Saint Laurent to Milan Communist rallies in the 70s and the Carsten Höller-designed slide in the courtyard of Prada's Milan headquarters.
But between flashes of brilliance, Prada admitted that although she worships Bret Easton Ellis, she's never heard of Ellis' contemporary, Jonathan Franzen:
Among the things Miuccia Prada admits she doesn’t know: who Jonathan Franzen is. She points out that she likes classic literature and cited Nineteenth century Russian and French novels. She says that she likes an American author but can't remember his name, so I suggested "The Corrections" and she said that she'd never heard of it, chortled, urged me to 'write it' (maybe she was pulling my leg) and at the end, in a sudden revelation, she mentions the contemporary novelist Bret Easton Ellis as a favorite.
Since we love Franzen and Ellis as much as we love our Prada bucket bags (and we love that she expanded into opera with costume design for The Met's Attila), we'll let this one slide and maybe one day she'll design an American Psycho raincoat inspired by Patrick Bateman's blood slicker.