Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons.
Photo: Willy Vanderperre/ Art + Commerce
Miuccia Prada, 77, and Raf Simons, 58, have devoted their professional lives to making clothes, racking up enough hours that, if they were punching a clock at a nine-to-five gig, they could easily slip into retirement. Between them, they have shaped the way we think about age, beauty, even aprons. They have also ruffled feathers and offended sensibilities.
As co–creative directors of the label that bears her name, Prada and Simons work side by side in the family business that she, with husband Patrizio Bertelli, transformed into a global conglomerate, which today includes Miu Miu, the brand she founded in 1993 and oversees alone. The announcement in February 2020 that the two designers would work together was surprising at first. Prada was a child of Italian privilege who reluctantly entered the fashion world. Simons is a son of the Belgian working class who founded his namesake menswear company in 1995. He went on to serve as creative director at Jil Sander (which Prada Group once owned), Christian Dior, and Calvin Klein. She gave women nylon backpacks and ugly chic; he offered men graphic bomber jackets, New Order references, and hand-painted parkas.
People — you, me, the internet — have wondered how two strong-willed creative minds work together. The question says a lot about how we think at this moment: that there is no middle ground between lockstep and mud fight. But six years in, they are looking like fashion’s elder statespeople.
In that time, the industry has navigated a pandemic, gummed-up supply chains, and a luxury downturn. Now it’s challenged by on-again, off-again tariffs and a heightened aversion to risk. Formidable talents such as Giorgio Armani and Valentino Garavani have died, and Versace landed under the Prada umbrella, the result of a $1.4 billion acquisition in December. Some of the most powerful brands in the world are being led by a new generation of designers just getting their bearings. And still, eight times a year, Prada and Simons try to make sense of a business that can be both wildly superficial and deeply meaningful.
When we meet, Prada arrives first and settles into an office chair at a large conference table. Simons comes in soon after, grabs a Coke Zero, and sits next to her. With a charcoal-gray cardigan wrapped over her olive dress, she sweeps her hands absentmindedly across the table as she speaks. He sits with his coat unbuttoned, hands fiddling with a pair of leather gloves. Both are dressed in Prada. They seem comfortable together, but there’s still plenty of daylight between them. Simons can talk over her; Prada sometimes interrupts him. He is loquacious; she is succinct, packing a lot into a single sentence. They disagree, but they don’t argue. Rather, Prada says, they’ll have “a discussion.” They aren’t stubbornly optimistic about this moment of political and social unrest, but they aren’t pessimists, either. To call them realists is to ignore the poetry in their thinking. Melancholy? Maybe. Worried? Most definitely.
I want to start by asking you to take the temperature of the fashion industry from a creative standpoint and then from the business side.
Miuccia Prada: It’s not a good moment for creativity because it’s not a moment of freedom. The moment is becoming, and fashion is becoming, more and more conservative. You see it in art. You see it in movies. You see it in fashion. So to work today, it’s not easy. I don’t have an answer other than to work seriously, in a way we think makes sense. To be seriously creative — considering what’s around — it’s not a good moment. So this is what you have to face.
Still, when I think about fashion, or any creative pursuit, it seems the most provocative art can sometimes emerge when times are more conservative.
MP: It’s not the case at this moment in history. Maybe it used to be like that, but not anymore.
Raf Simons: Obviously, our world has deep problems, and our behavior in general reflects that. We definitely feel the desire to follow our instincts, but besides the condition of the world, fashion as an industry has brought itself to a point where there are different expectations from designers. Originally, a brand started with one person, whether it was Balenciaga or Saint Laurent or you or me or whatever. Then the industry evolved. There are now a lot of brands where the founder is not there anymore. They are run by big companies. They have their techniques, desires, wishes. Even if Miuccia still owns her own company, we are surrounded by many other factors and people and departments that all together, with other brands, have created a different system from the past. And it does impact creativity. Regardless, we don’t like to nag about the past. We don’t like to say, “Oh, the past was better.” We’re like, “No, this is the future. This is clearly where things are going.”
MP: I insist on intellectual honesty. That’s the only thing I care about. You can say, “Yes, okay, now fashion is connected with art, cinema — everything.” But our job is to work for a company that has to sell clothes and bags and everything. That point for me is crucial.
It feels like a moment when it’s really challenging for people to be intellectually honest on the public stage because those watching and consuming aren’t interested in nuanced conversations.
MP: You have to decide where you want to be, so I decided that I want to follow my principles and whatever happens, happens. Complexity is valuable. You try not to be banal, but you also try to be direct and simple. But at what point does simple become stupid?
RS: Creativity in general has become a big business. We have to be honest about it. And big business does not always go so easily hand in hand with ideas. When I grew up, I wanted to be different. Now everybody wants to be the same, so there’s group behavior that is not the nature, I think, of real fashion.
MP: The fashion world is criticized because it’s all the same. Anybody who does something, after two months, everybody has the same stuff. Everybody is desperately trying to sell because the companies are big and you have a big responsibility toward your employees.
Prada has become bigger. The group purchased Versace in December. Is it mandatory to get bigger to survive?
MP: That we discuss all the time in the family. Many years ago, I said, “I don’t want to do clothes for a few chic people.” That is too easy for me. I want to face a bigger world. So I know why I wanted to grow — because I was interested in a wider audience. Now it’s a necessity. Because if you don’t make enough money, you are excluded by the market. You have to grow; otherwise, you are canceled. I’m a fashion designer, but as an industrialist, growing is the nature of the business.
RS: It’s a decision. Miuccia is very honest about it. When I was with my brand, I was also very honest about it — I decided to not go big. It’s not that I think one is better than the other. Absolutely not. It’s just something that I didn’t feel like I needed for my brand because I wanted to give myself a kind of freedom that I knew I would not have if I had let it go further.
A lot of people, me included, are fascinated by the way you work together because you both seem to have such big thoughts. Do you talk and talk and talk and talk to each other?
MP: Yes!
Or are you at a point at which it’s all just shorthand — you can communicate with a nod or a glance?
MP: People were so negative, just hoping that we were not able to work together: How could it be true that they work well together? First of all, because of respect. Second, because we have 80 percent the same taste. Third, the question about becoming bigger or not, that is the only place where sometimes we have a discussion because I am in the middle. I try to mediate between us as designers and me as part of the business. But we work very well together.
RS: When we decided to do it, we didn’t have this feeling of Me, me, me. I’ve always loved collaboration, and Miuccia does too. Once she decides to give a collaborator an opportunity to work for her or the company, she gives these people a lot of freedom because she respects them. The decision-making is in the choice of who she works with.
MP: When we have discussions, it’s when there are requests. I try to compromise.
RS: She is the owner of this big company, you know? Naturally, it’s different for me than for her. As much as I feel the same responsibility as Miuccia to push the company forward, it can’t be the same feeling because I am not the owner. It’s as simple as that. I have, maybe, a big mouth, saying, “I kept my own brand very small.” Maybe I was not really good enough to make it bigger. I have admiration for people who are able, with a strong fashion output, to make their companies big. And by big, I don’t only mean the money — I mean the number of people you reach. Because that’s what she meant before: having the curiosity to not only work within your own little eccentric, intellectual circle, but connect with people from all cultures.
How does a collection begin? Does it begin with a conversation or a particular image that one or both of you might bring in? I’m also wondering what it means when you have a male gaze inserted into the brand. And your backgrounds are so different: Miuccia has a privileged background; Raf’s is more modest. How do those things combine?
MP: We made a pact: If one of us hates it, we don’t do it.
RS: I said, “Let’s make this easy.” I knew her work well before we started; I was like, Oh, she always has a lot of ideas.
MP: He has a lot of ideas.
RS: If there is an idea that comes on the table, whether it’s from her or from me, and one of us doesn’t like it, we go to the next thing. We just do the things we love.
MP: It’s enough for one of us to make a face like this [she grimaces as if she has just sniffed spoiled milk] for the other to understand: “Okay, forget it.” Sometimes one of us insists on something; it becomes a conversation that maybe brings something interesting out.
Do you work separately on ideas and then bring them together?
RS: We’re not people who go and sit separately at a desk to think, What should we do? We are together every day, so the dialogue is automatic. And then there are periods when maybe I am with the team a little bit more because Miuccia is working on Miu Miu. I start things up. But the moment that she is with us, we have a dialogue. It’s a way to share ideas and share things we are thinking about. It’s very action-reaction, action-reaction. The job is not easy, but I think the way we work together is actually really easy. I also think it’s very calming.
MP: The more we work together, the easier it is. Also, the trust is crucial because anything he does, I know I like it.
Everything?
MP: More or less, yes. More or less. He’s very precise and sophisticated. I’m happy that he’s willing to solve problems because I know he’s so demanding.
Would it be fairish to say that two things come together — one is a conversation about how something should look or feel, and the other side is the precise execution of that feeling? Or is that way too simplified?
RS: The nature of my independent brand back in the day, because it was a small company and was very dependent on a lot of external people, producers and all that, I needed to be very precise. When you have a small brand and you’re produced by a lot of Italian houses, they’re not going to make your things first. You’re last. It took some time to become calm about it because for so many years, I needed to work long in advance to get all my ideas out there and have them executed in the right way because I am quite a control freak.
Over the years, Prada has played with uniforms and stereotypes. Do those clichés hit in a different way now that we’ve become a culture invested in tropes about hyperfemininity? And the same thing can be said about cartoonish masculinity.
MP: I always wanted to be against the clichés, to use the clichés to talk about the clichés. I never wanted to do a bias dress, for instance. I never wanted to do anything that was the typical sexy way of being a woman. I never did a show about the bias cut. I should do it at some point. Bias is sexy; it’s beautiful. But I was always against that kind of idea of beauty. The apron, I don’t know if it was badly interpreted, but I was criticized. Sandra and Florentina wore the aprons as a symbol of the work and suffering of women, not to symbolize housewives — some people noticed that but very few. They understood that it was talking about the pain, the suffering, the submission. I knew I was doing something scary, but I really wanted to do it.
Sandra Hüller in one of the butcher-style aprons from Miu Miu’s spring 2026 collection.
Photo: Peter White/Getty Images
Why did people criticize it?
MP: It was very tough. It was not, in theory, commercial. It was a bit exaggerated. I knew that, but I liked it so much.
How much more challenging is it to do collections like that at a time when itseems people don’t understand irony?
MP: We go on insisting on our beliefs. I think that is the right thing to do. And also, we are successful, so it’s what people want in the end. I want to continue my career doing what I believe is right. And he is the same. And I think it’s probably an advantage because so few people know what they want and know what they believe. I don’t know if I’m right or wrong, but I have my beliefs.
RS: You want to keep following your instincts and your beliefs because otherwise, what’s left? If I couldn’t, I would step out.
MP: You have courage and you’re brave and then you are afraid that you’ve done something wrong for the business. You don’t want to fail and have to fire people.
RS: The reason why I came here is because I’ve known Prada for many years. Prada was one of the only brands I bought for many, many, many years. Its nature is to balance reality with eccentricity. That’s always been its nature. It’s honest. I think there’s an audience for that. I feel in general that if I look at the fashion landscape, I see people who are strong-willed — or what I used to think of as strong — trying to be a bit all over the place. Their work isn’t clear anymore and, therefore, it’s become uninteresting. You [gestures to Prada] always made real clothes for real people. No matter how eccentric it sometimes could go, you always balanced it out. Now we see this landscape of overcommercialized, easy clothes, from extremely expensive to not expensive. What they call the new minimal, the new luxury.
How do you speak to the next generation? Their entry point to fashion is so different from what it was 15 years ago.
MP: If your brain is contemporary, if you are dealing with contemporaneity, you’ll do something meaningful. I don’t think I ever actually try to please people. It is the worst.
Years ago, you said you had questions about what is real and what is fake, what is beauty and what is artifice. It seems the questions you were asking two decades ago are even more relevant today.
RS: This is for you [looks at Prada], but I’m going to say “yes.”
MP: I try to make it right. I try to make it good. I try to make it intelligent. I always try to be very serious about the world and what I’m doing.
RS: For decades and decades and decades, the fashion message was passed from a designer to an audience. And the audience could decide: We like it or We don’t like it. Now there are a lot of other players who send out fashion messages who are, sorry to say, not designers.
Influencers?
RS: I’m just explaining that the landscape has changed. A lot of people who are not fashion designers have bigger businesses in fashion than fashion designers. Is it bad? Is it good? It’s not what I’m saying. I’m not even judging it. I’m saying it’s what we deal with. It’s a new world.
Brands make those choices because they believe they’ll be able to connect to a young consumer. How do you guys think about folks in their 20s? Are they primed for something truly designed? Or are they more interested in an immediately recognizable logo?
RS: Both, Robin. Both. Fashion is the new pop. It used to be a small, eccentric thing.
MP: I know so many kids who know everything about art or movies. They’re well read, even more than our generation. They know everything. You don’t have to think about pleasing anybody. You have to do what you think makes sense inside. And I think there are a lot of young kids who are clever and they understand. I refuse to think that the whole world is becoming stupid.
How does that change what you do? Or does it?
MP: Me? Zero.
RS: Same. It doesn’t change anything. The only thing is you have to take into account that your audience is very different people, different regions, different expectations.
So is the real question “How do you connect with a generation that has so many different experiences?”
MP: How can I imagine what other people want and desire? I just do what I think is right for me and possibly for other people. And eventually, other people will like it. So far, it seems so. Sometimes they say we have to do a successful bag. I wish it were that simple. You sit at the table and you do what you think is great.
RS: You can’t really do something that’s right for everyone anyway …
MP: Impossible.
RS: That’s one of the reasons the fashion industry has become what it is now: The industry wants to please everybody and produces too much. Too much fashion. Too much product. Too much presentation. Too much bringing out. The danger is fashion won’t be so desired anymore. It’s the nature of human beings — something you have easy access to, you don’t desire.
I want to circle back to where we started: the idea of fashion being able to speak to this moment. How important is fashion in helping people create an identity and find a group of peers? Within the current political administration in the States, there’s clearly a fashion look. “Mar-a-Lago face” connects a group of people. Do you see fashion as having a role right now beyond just dressing us?
RS: I’ve always seen it like that for myself. When I bought certain fashion brands, I felt like I was part of that way of thinking, part of that community, without knowing the other people wearing it. I remember, a long time ago, in the early stage of my career, I questioned myself. I was like, Why am I doing fashion? It’s so meaningless. Maybe I should just go and work in a hospital, for example. And somebody told me, “You have no idea what it means to people, what you do.”
MP: Me, I am the opposite. I always had a problem with my job. I was always ashamed because when I started, I was a feminist living with the intelligentsia. And to be a fashion designer in the ’70s was the worst. I was always skeptical about it. I thought that doctors and politicians were the only professions that were, for me, important. Teachers, also. Recently, I am happier because I see that fashion is important to people. And, of course, it’s important. But I always say it’s important when we are well. If you have somebody in the hospital — somebody sick, somebody’s dying — who cares about fashion? So fashion is for the good moments. Now, the money we gain with Prada allows us to do Fondazione Prada and so many other things. So it also became an instrument, besides the fact that I really love my work.
Do you think fashion can be weaponized? I think it’s been weaponized by the women and men of the Trump administration.
MP: For sure. The way you dress represents a way of thinking, so it is relevant. It’s a reflection of what is happening.
RS: That’s the fear of individuality, which is the saddest thing in the world.
MP: I totally agree.
RS: I love togetherness. I love community. I love family. I love friends. But individuality and individual expression? If people have a fear of expressing their individuality through words, through the way they are dressing, whatever, it’s …
MP: But at the same time, it’s a bad thing if people only think about themselves and not a community. It’s important that you express what you think. But too much individuality is a rejection of community.
If there was a way to describe how you are going into 2026, what might it be?
MP: Let’s hope it’s not too bad.
RS: Keep believing that change can come. We see that things can change very quickly into something bad. I also have to believe that things can change into something very good. Otherwise, you get depressed. The other thing is that you can’t become numb. Nobody can become numb about these shocking events and shocking world situations. I start to question myself sometimes, like, What’s next? How far could it possibly go with all of us humans walking on this earth? How far could this possibly go? As a designer, as a creative, I have no fear. But then sometimes I’m like, I’m fucking scared.
As another appointment calls, Prada gathers herself to depart. She buttons her cardigan and wraps a woolen scarf around her neck, fluffing it just so as she keeps her eyes locked on Simons while he speaks. She tucks her elbow-length gloves, embossed with a crocodile pattern, into her handbag. And when she finally stands with an apology for having to leave, she slips into a gray wool coat with a shearling collar the color of salted caramel. Prada wearing Prada. No big labels. No extravagant logos. Not quite pretty, but interesting. Which is much better. And with a wave, she leaves the room.
The sale resulted in Versace creative director Dario Vitale’s exit. Longtime Simons associate Pieter Mulier replaced him.
The namesake menswear label, which Simons established in Antwerp, closed after 27 years following his jump to Prada.
The line, which shows four collections annually, has recorded double-digit growth in recent years, outpacing the flagship Prada brand.
The actor Sandra Hüller and the choreographer Florentina Holzinger were among the nonprofessional models to walk the spring 2026 Miu Miu show.
The Prada Group is valued at $13.2 billion; it finished the third quarter of 2025 with $4.8 billion in revenue.
Prada and Bertelli founded the private museum and arts center in 1993. It has locations in Milan and Venice.