The via Fogazzaro atelier sits behind a nondescript door, two floors above street level

The via Fogazzaro atelier sits behind a nondescript door, two floors above street level. Inside, a toile is pinned to a dressmaker's form — sleeves set low, armhole dropped past the shoulder's natural line. Miuccia Prada adjusts the drape, steps back, considers. The silhouette reads as wrong until it doesn't. That reversal, the moment a garment crosses from awkward to inevitable, is where the house has lived for forty years.

Prada began in 1913 as Fratelli Prada, a leathergoods concern founded by Mario Prada and his brother Martino. The original shop opened in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, Milan's glass-vaulted arcade, selling English steamer trunks and walrus-skin handbags to the Milanese bourgeoisie. Mario's daughter Luisa took over in the Thirties. The business remained small, discreet, focused on craft rather than expansion. By the late Seventies it was an afterthought — respected among those who knew, invisible to everyone else.

Miuccia Prada, Luisa's granddaughter, joined the company in 1978. She had studied political science, spent time in the Communist Party, trained as a mime. Fashion was not the plan. But the atelier needed someone, and she had the name. Her early work was functional, almost severe. In 1979 she introduced a black nylon backpack — pocone, a military-grade weave, lined and reinforced. No logo, just a small enamelled triangle. It sold to students, architects, people who moved through the city with intent. The bag was not beautiful. It was considered.

The ready-to-wear line launched in 1988. The first collection featured brown and grey, dropped waists, pleated skirts cut to mid-calf. Hemlines that season ran short; colour was back. Prada showed the opposite. The press was confused. Buyers were cautious. But a certain kind of woman — the kind who read theory, worked in galleries, distrusted obvious gestures — recognised something. The clothes did not flatter. They proposed.

What followed was not a single breakthrough but a series of quiet assertions. The Spring 1996 collection paired chartreuse with rust, showed dresses with clashing prints, sent models down the runway in flats. Autumn 1996 brought those nylon backpacks back, this time in jewel tones, worn with tailored coats and pencil skirts. The juxtaposition — technical fabric against fine wool, sportswear against suiting — became a signature. Prada was not interested in harmony. It preferred dissonance that resolved into sense a season later.

Miuccia worked alongside her husband, Patrizio Bertelli, who managed the business side. He restructured production, opened factories, built a distribution network that allowed the house to scale without diluting. The two operated in tandem — she designed, he executed. It was not romantic. It was methodical. By the late Nineties Prada had become a reference point, the house that made ugly chic and intellectual dress commercially viable.

The early 2000s saw expansion: Helmut Lang and Jil Sander acquired, then sold. Church's and Car Shoe brought into the fold. A foundation established in Milan, dedicated to contemporary art and cinema. The moves were ambitious, sometimes misjudged. The Lang and Sander purchases, in particular, proved difficult to sustain. Both designers left within years. Prada's strength, it turned out, was Prada itself — the singular vision, the refusal to simplify.

The house has always worked in paradox. Minimalism with maximalist detail. Sportswear in silk faille. Shoes that are both clunky and refined. The flame-print skirts from Spring 2011, the fur-trimmed coats from Autumn 2013, the crystal-encrusted socks from Spring 2017 — each piece functioned as a provocation, then became a template. What seemed absurd on the runway looked inevitable six months later, worn on a street in Seoul or Copenhagen or New York.

Miuccia has described her process as doubt made visible. She does not begin with a clear idea. She builds the collection in the atelier, adjusting as she goes, questioning each choice. The result is clothing that feels provisional even when it is meticulously constructed. A Prada coat might feature hand-stitched seams and an off-centre closure. The craftsmanship is evident. The logic is withheld.

In 2020 the house appointed Raf Simons as co-creative director, a partnership that raised questions. Simons, known for his minimalist tailoring and youth-culture references, seemed at odds with Prada's cerebral femininity. But the first collection, shown in September 2020, demonstrated a different dynamic. The two designers worked in dialogue, not compromise. Miuccia's prints appeared on Simons's tailoring. His proportions inflected her silhouettes. The result was neither fusion nor contrast but a third position — two voices in the same room, speaking at once.

The collaboration has continued, collection after collection. Some pieces read as purely Miuccia — the nylon bags, the jewel-toned coats, the skirts that sit just wrong on the hip. Others feel like Simons — the oversized blazers, the graphic knits, the shoes that reference Nineties rave culture. Most occupy a space between, where it is impossible to say who designed what. That ambiguity, the refusal to clarify authorship, is itself a statement. Fashion has long valorised the singular genius. Prada now proposes something else.

The house remains family-controlled, though succession is a question. Miuccia is in her mid-seventies. Bertelli, her husband and business partner, has stepped back from daily operations. Lorenzo Bertelli, their son, has taken on increasing responsibility, overseeing marketing and brand strategy. Whether he will assume creative direction, or whether the Simons partnership represents a different model, is unclear. Prada has never been predictable.

What endures is the method. The house does not follow trends. It does not simplify for the sake of accessibility. It makes clothes that require a second look, that withhold their logic until you live with them. A Prada piece is rarely love at first sight. It is an acquired taste, a slow recognition. You buy the skirt because it looks wrong. You wear it because, somehow, it works.

The via Fogazzaro atelier is still there, behind the same nondescript door. The toiles are still pinned, adjusted, reconsidered. The process has not changed. What began as a leathergoods shop in a glass arcade has become something larger — a house that makes difficulty desirable, that insists fashion can be both intellectual and commercial, that refuses to choose between the two. Whether that model survives the next decade is an open question. For now, it holds.