Look closer. Do you see it? Do you feel it? A Prada dress teeming with hand-stitched bows. A leather bag handsomely adorned with individually fashioned flowers: the emotional intelligence vested in crafted objects is beyond the ken of AI. Machines can’t do this.

This kind of craft has an energy of its own. It comes from a collective memory which sees years of expertise (often going back generations) passed down and distilled into one piece. Crafted things give pause for thought. More goes into them, so we value them more and preserve them. Craft survives.

The characterful feel of something handmade seems so human, with each maker possessing their own signature way of doing things where each new thing they make is slightly different from the last. But craft also requires a kind of superhuman concentrated focus on detail that’s almost alien in today’s attention-deficit culture.

Prada, founded in 1913 by Mario Prada, is a house built on craft. By 1919, the quality of his luggage and leather goods quickly earned him a warrant from Italy’s royal House of Savoy. That care for craft and exquisite artisanship has always been a Prada value. It continued when Mario’s granddaughter, Miuccia, with her husband Patrizio Bertelli, transformed Prada from an old-world house into a global fashion powerhouse in the ’90s and ’00s. Fast forward to 2024 and those artisanal elements are ever-present, often bringing storytelling, whimsy and humanity to the Prada project, which Miuccia now shares with her co-creative director Raf Simons. When she and Simons want to say something with their work that resonates emotionally, they do it with craft, and so it’s to those highly crafted pieces we turn, to mainline the heart of their message.

For AW24, the pair wanted to explore ideas of romance in a collection that pieced together fragments of fashion histories from men’s and women’s wardrobes by recontextualising them into something new (an important aspect of Prada’s mentality). Mrs Prada talked of “creating things with love”, the ultimate antidote to modern cynicism. “We touched on the idea of romance,” she said, “which is perhaps a taboo to mention in this moment, especially within fashion. There is a sense of romance to this collection of values of love and caring embedded in the clothes. Love between people, romantic but also familial, and it’s not so much a theoretical statement but a conversation about emotions. For me these are vital ideas. They are always present in what we create. Creating beauty. Creating things with love.”

There was a familiarity or nostalgia to many of the pieces, as formal men’s tailoring, fused with delicate vintage lingerie, seemed to evoke past lives. The new Buckle bag is a case in point. If it looks familiar, that is by design. Made from the finest calfskin with a nappa interior, the bag is brand new for 2024 but feels like it’s always been there. The belt detail grounds it firmly in the brand’s lexicon – belts are a long-time Prada signature which are often worn knotted, as opposed to buckled over coats and dresses (as they were on the AW24 runway). Each bag passes through several hand-finishing processes, where the final act of the craftsman is to thread the belt through the loops. From the stamped gold logo to practical sizing, it has a hand-me-down quality (with quality being the operative word).

For this collection, old became new, as Simons said. “We strive to make something beautiful. You cannot make something beautiful without going to the past. You cannot erase the history of beauty – that is what defines our ideas of beauty today. We always go back. In this moment, which is such a complicated moment, it is vital to know your history. Who you are, where you come from. You can only realise your future if you know your past.”

How far back to do you go? Antique porcelain inspired the floral spazzolato Cleo bags, crafted with a special high-frequency technique to recreate flower reliefs, which were then printed and hand-painted. Meanwhile, the designers saved a special fascination for the femininity of bows, frills and ruffles by creating a series of hand-finished ribbon dresses that went to the heart of the collection. Ribbons and bows? They are just the kind of cliché that Prada likes to lean into by asking why do they persist? What’s the attraction? What do they mean today?

The craft that goes into each dress is intense (these are the pieces that collectors and museums will clamour for). There’s a wow factor attached to the effort as well as the aesthetic. Fifty metres of hand-cut satin ribbon is used on each dress, with every ribbon hand-applied onto the sablé base fabric in a special chevron pattern which emphasises movement and shape. That process alone takes 13 hours before it’s steamed and pressed to give it a worn effect. Only then can the 35 bows be applied. Each one is hand-shaped, ironed and stitched into place. The dress is then finished with more bows at the hips and the neck. A true masterpiece of skill, patience and design.

As Simons suggests, the new cannot exist without the old. Take the Galleria bag, a classic shape that adapts each season. For AW24, the brand dangled it from a special leather wrist strap (a new way to wear an old friend). Some featured hand-cut leather flowers, individually placed by experienced craftspeople on each bag, while others came lavishly fringed, but nothing exemplified that Prada spirit more than the AW24 Galleria in the technical marvel material re-nylon (a fabric made of econyl using regenerated nylon yarn). It was embroidered with floral motifs in a powerful coming together of new and old values. The glory of Prada is that techniques like this go right back to the dawn of the house and sit side by side with a visceral sense of now.

Taken from Issue 73 of 10 Magazine UK – RISING, RENEW, RENAISSANCE – out now.

prada.com

Photographer DAVID HUGHES
Fashion Editor SOPHIA NEOPHITOU
Text CLAUDIA CROFT
Model ANICA CUCA at Select Model Management
Hair HIROSHI MATSUSHITA
Make-up ANDREW GALLIMORE using Prada Beauty
Manicurist SASHA GODDARD at Saint LukeDigital operator PAUL ALLISTER
Lighting assistant GUY ISHERWOOD
Fashion assistants SONYA MAZURYK, KEREN KABONGO and YASMINE CARIAGA
Production ZAC APOSTOLOU