miuccia prada

>> "The fashion industry and child stars are having a moment," New York proclaims this week: Rodarte is currently partial to 12-year-old Elle Fanning, 14-year-old Hailee Steinfeld caught eyes during award season in Prabal Gurung and Prada, and Vogue is reportedly planning a portfolio featuring both girls plus 14-year-old Chloe Moretz for an upcoming issue. Then, today, Steinfeld attended the Miu Miu show as a special guest of Miuccia Prada — she's rumored to have caught Prada's eye, which begs the question: will she be an upcoming face for the brand? [Style File]

>> Miuccia Prada, politician? "Yes, it's true," the designer confirmed when asked if it was true she'd like to enter politics one day. And is she considering the path seriously? "Probably, yes," she replied. "Politics have always been a little of my passion. And now I [could] use my work as a tool to do things other than fashion."

But for now, she's still focusing on fashion, which she says has been made more difficult — creatively — by globalization: "I always say that up until the '70s, fashion was white, Catholic, Western. Now fashion embraces the whole world with [different] religions, costumes, et cetera, et cetera. Before, it reflected the spirit of a small group. There is just one collection, and we don’t make specific things for specific markets, but [the clothes] try to accommodate a world which has become a lot bigger. It’s a lot more difficult in this sense…[but] I think it enriches [the design experience] because it’s bigger."

Because of this need to be in touch on the global scene, Prada is opening design studios in both Hong Kong and Paris this year: "We decided to do this because not everyone wants to live in Milan.…I made a curious twist on the French word flâner, which means that when the people wanted to understand what was happening, they strolled the city. Now people travel the world . . . I’d say it was almost a practical necessity…also it’s clearly an opportunity to get some young minds, fresher minds."

Prada also reads blogs to stay in touch — but not on the computer: "I have reports sent over. Every week I have a summary sent over of the positive blogs, the negative blogs and the interesting blogs. I read them on paper. It’s interesting to see what is making the rounds, what people are talking about. All of our work as designers is to understand what people are thinking, where the world is going, how things work. It’s one of many sources of information.…It’s not that I do it to do my job better. I do it because it interests me.…Definitely everything that leads me to know more about what’s happening probably makes my work more interesting. At least I hope so."

And despite the fact that she doesn't seem to mind the immediacy the Internet brings to information, it doesn't sound like Prada will be pulling a Burberry and selling clothes straight off the runway anytime soon: "I think that, for now, this is the way it is. You can’t avoid it. It’s like being in denial about the future. The future will be even more like this because it’s an opportunity that’s so big and convenient. I don’t use a computer, but I see everyone around me using them. It’s immediate access to information, a way of communicating. I think it’s a real, great revolution, perhaps bigger than the Industrial Revolution . . . Sometimes people criticize us because we aren’t technological enough, because we don’t sell on the Internet…but [to have people] click on a runway show and sell it, I don’t think that’s the essence of the change."

>> Sasha Pivovorova had a long, storied run as a Prada face from Fall 2005 all the way through Spring 2008, when she was deposed by Linda Evangelista in the Fall 2008 Prada campaign. She may have been lost by Prada for a few seasons, but she wasn't forgotten: she's back, alongside Kasia Struss and the also-resuscitated Querelle Jansen, who was both a Prada and Miu Miu face in Spring 2004, for the Spring 2011 Miu Miu campaign, shot by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott. [TFS]

>> China is the fastest growing market for fashion and luxury — and the industry is definitely taking notice. Anna Wintour recently made her first trip to China over Thanksgiving, and later wrote that she hopes China will soon have its own Vogue Fashion Fund; Diane von Furstenberg visited earlier this month and said, "I’d like to sell every Chinese a T-shirt."

And now Prada, which has seen a 51 percent surge in revenue from the region in the first nine months of 2010, is planning to restage its Spring 2011 fashion show in Beijing on Jan. 22. Both Prada CEO Patrizio Bertelli and Miuccia Prada are expected to attend, and Prada plans on creating a series of new items specifically for the event.

>> Anna Dello Russo attended the Spring 2011 Prada show in a sparkly watermelon headpiece, and backstage, Miuccia Prada, who sent a banana-print shirt and skirts down the runway, wore dangly banana earrings, which she said she made for the show but her assistant wouldn't let her put them in. Prada show guests were served fruit-shaped candies, and yesterday, Dello Russo not only wore a strawberry-printed Yves Saint Laurent dress, but a cherry headpiece, too, from the same Milanese shop she bought the watermelon hat: Alan Journo. Needless to say, the Italian fashion segment is feeling a fruit motif.

>> Shala Monroque, with her propensity for kitten-heeled shoes — "I don't have a high threshold for pain. I have to have comfortable shoes" — and madcap mixmastering has earned her quite a few fashion fans. "Ironically," she tells Harper's Bazaar, "some of the outfits that receive the most attention from the fashion crowd are the ones that are a little off."

31-year-old St. Lucian Monroque, who is Pop's editor at large (and Pop editor Dasha Zhukova's best friend), has lived in Manhattan for the past ten years, although she apparently spends less than six months a year in her Upper East Side residence — due to her jetsetting lifestyle.

Zhukova, Miuccia Prada on Monroque »

The series of imaginary colorful landscapes used as background in Miuccia Prada's resort presentation spoke to the traveling gypsy theme of Prada's collection, as did the vividly hued costume jewelry—oversize hoop earrings in yellow, green, and red and armfuls of lightweight glass bangles. The clothes, however, stood firmly in the polished eras of the '30s and '40s with wallpaper prints on calf-length dresses paired with fur stoles and structured handbags. Pumps with faux coral and beaded embellishments mixed with neutral platform sandals and backless flats with ballerina ribbons in a collection where accessories most definitely took center stage.

>> Fall 2010 Prada Campaign Cast Revealed — Miranda Kerr Included —A number of current and former Victoria's Secret model appared on Miuccia Prada's Fall 2010 runway, but only one made the final cut for the accompanying Prada campaign: Miranda Kerr. She is reportedly joined by Valerija Kelava, Daria Strokous, and Angela Lindvall — the latter two who didn't walk the Fall 2010 Prada runway at all — and photographed by Steven Meisel. [@GB65, TFS]