This is a brilliant piece! There's no such thing as an "ethical billionaire". The externalities are always ignored whether it's underpaid and unsafe labour, limitless resource extraction or the unfettered pollution of the natural world.
One of the best you've written. Unsolicited editorial suggestion: Given the amount of research and citation that went into this piece, you could easily expand it into a full-length essay. So good! <3
I could see this one in a book—longer, maybe a little more formal in tone but not so much as to lose the voice. It's a true compliment I'm making here! Love this piece.
This is a ‘plane for the pantheon. Her constant referral to her ‘politics’ as well as the labelling switcheroo you outline belie a deep insecurity I think we often see in the ultra wealthy. They know being rich (…evil) is corny but they are always searching for a way around it. Zuck and Bezos will never be cool, not because they don’t patronize sustainable indie clothing brands but because they are rich, evil, and lame. Those are antithetical to swag. In my opinion this logic extends to these billion dollar brands like Prada. Everything they do wrt activism/pro-social messaging/gesturing to Miuccia’s political past is all an effort to compensate for the fact that these fools are lame as fuck and they know it.
What you’ve written here feels very personal to me. I’m not a Prada fangirl and never have been (miss me with the big houses, please-and-thank-you), but I am French Canadian through my grandma’s family and am currently working on an application for Canadian citizenship by descent. While my people were putting out sawmill fires and boiling giant vats of lice- and bedbug-ridden clothing in logging camps on the UP of Michigan, thousands of other French Canadians were toiling away in textile mills on the East coast - they were literally referred to as the Chinese of the East (!!!). The locations of the factories may have since changed, but now just as then, the women doing this thankless work are daughters, sisters, aunties, mothers, grandmas. The dehumanization remains, and no amount of pseudo-feminist intellectualizing or appeal to artistic genius can cover the stink of it.
Love breakdowns like this. It reminds me in Worn (Sofi Thanhauser) when she talks about how fashion writers used to discuss clothing in terms of material, but now the sole identifier is the designer's name. Pieces like this are grounding, thank you.
Speaking on Materialism specifically, as someone who for years had worked in luxury retail, I can confidently say that Prada has to have some of the worst quality items on the market, from the leathers to the nylon, which is a shame because whenever I come across vintage Prada irl from 10–15+ years ago, the difference in quality is night and day.
Wanting to evoke and idea or message in a collection is one thing, but it baffles me when people try to intellectualize Prada, at least in its current form as something other that the farce it is, the ghost of its former communist self . The Elia Kazan of fashion. To loosely paraphrase Robert Pirsig from Zen and art of motorcycle maintenance,
Regarding items that are poorly made, in this case clothing, bags etc,the idea of not caring is already built into it by the producer so why should the consumer expect anything more than a sub par product. Especially with something coming from a multi billion dollar corporation
i've seen and heard other anecdotal evidence to that effect... the shirt i got is a true beauty but i was of course able to inspect it IRL before copping
Deluxe was a great and educational book but I wish it had gone farther in its moral and political assessments of luxury fashion. I hadn't heard this about Prada but a billionaire marketing herself as a sympathetic leftist while immiserating women in factories worldwide turns my stomach. Thanks for writing this, fashion journalism needs more of this.
Excellent perspective on the friction-filled layers of wildly successful ownership. One cannot own the handbag without the fingerprints of the hands that toiled to bring it to existence. Three weeks ago, in Milan, I visited the original Prada store (not fact checked - a description provided by the seductive sales associate), with a dad I was traveling with and our two 10 year old daughters. The girls walked out with handbags, I walked out with a photograph of them beaming with pride, clutching the most valuable item in their young wardrobes. Clueless owners to a system of manufacture they can't begin to imagine. Part of me wishes I could show that photo to the real people that made the bag to see the delight their work created, part of me wishes they were holding melting gelatos instead of Prada bags.
Fantastic piece! Around every corner, I am reminded how great you are at your jobs. There is simply not enough of this caliber of writing around on this subject. Incredible.
“…that it’s tempting to call Prada a petrochemical firm masquerading as a fashion company. “
Wow. Powerful.
I imagine she laughs quite a bit that Maria Bianchi has gotten all these people to call her “Mrs. Prada.”
I always thought the fact that they yelled at each other was kind of endearing. As a child of the Mediterranean I appreciate that love language. I remember when all the teachers from my kids’ fancy pants Reggio Emilia nursery school went on a field trip to an actual Reggio Emilia nursery school and were shocked that the teachers yelled at the kids all day long lol.
“Billionaires” and “the social good” exist in an inverse relationship." Yup. How any can argue the inverse is absurd and untenable.
Thank you for digging into this. Have you read Piketty's Brief History of Equality? Arguments about creativity being stifled if earning potential/income is capped is elegantly debunked. And if you 'accidentally' make billions as a musician or film-maker, how defensible? On the shoulders of all those before and around us. We have the right, a duty, to be creative, to work, but not to the fruits of that process. (BG)
So appreciate your (plural) writings, your perspectives. Keep at it, please.
This is a brilliant piece! There's no such thing as an "ethical billionaire". The externalities are always ignored whether it's underpaid and unsafe labour, limitless resource extraction or the unfettered pollution of the natural world.
One of the best you've written. Unsolicited editorial suggestion: Given the amount of research and citation that went into this piece, you could easily expand it into a full-length essay. So good! <3
thank you - gotta ask, what do you mean by full-length essay? this is a full-length essay !
I could see this one in a book—longer, maybe a little more formal in tone but not so much as to lose the voice. It's a true compliment I'm making here! Love this piece.
This is a ‘plane for the pantheon. Her constant referral to her ‘politics’ as well as the labelling switcheroo you outline belie a deep insecurity I think we often see in the ultra wealthy. They know being rich (…evil) is corny but they are always searching for a way around it. Zuck and Bezos will never be cool, not because they don’t patronize sustainable indie clothing brands but because they are rich, evil, and lame. Those are antithetical to swag. In my opinion this logic extends to these billion dollar brands like Prada. Everything they do wrt activism/pro-social messaging/gesturing to Miuccia’s political past is all an effort to compensate for the fact that these fools are lame as fuck and they know it.
What you’ve written here feels very personal to me. I’m not a Prada fangirl and never have been (miss me with the big houses, please-and-thank-you), but I am French Canadian through my grandma’s family and am currently working on an application for Canadian citizenship by descent. While my people were putting out sawmill fires and boiling giant vats of lice- and bedbug-ridden clothing in logging camps on the UP of Michigan, thousands of other French Canadians were toiling away in textile mills on the East coast - they were literally referred to as the Chinese of the East (!!!). The locations of the factories may have since changed, but now just as then, the women doing this thankless work are daughters, sisters, aunties, mothers, grandmas. The dehumanization remains, and no amount of pseudo-feminist intellectualizing or appeal to artistic genius can cover the stink of it.
Love breakdowns like this. It reminds me in Worn (Sofi Thanhauser) when she talks about how fashion writers used to discuss clothing in terms of material, but now the sole identifier is the designer's name. Pieces like this are grounding, thank you.
"you can not amass a billion dollars without committing yourself to a system of immiseration and environmental degradation"
have mercy, this is perfect
Speaking on Materialism specifically, as someone who for years had worked in luxury retail, I can confidently say that Prada has to have some of the worst quality items on the market, from the leathers to the nylon, which is a shame because whenever I come across vintage Prada irl from 10–15+ years ago, the difference in quality is night and day.
Wanting to evoke and idea or message in a collection is one thing, but it baffles me when people try to intellectualize Prada, at least in its current form as something other that the farce it is, the ghost of its former communist self . The Elia Kazan of fashion. To loosely paraphrase Robert Pirsig from Zen and art of motorcycle maintenance,
Regarding items that are poorly made, in this case clothing, bags etc,the idea of not caring is already built into it by the producer so why should the consumer expect anything more than a sub par product. Especially with something coming from a multi billion dollar corporation
i've seen and heard other anecdotal evidence to that effect... the shirt i got is a true beauty but i was of course able to inspect it IRL before copping
Deluxe was a great and educational book but I wish it had gone farther in its moral and political assessments of luxury fashion. I hadn't heard this about Prada but a billionaire marketing herself as a sympathetic leftist while immiserating women in factories worldwide turns my stomach. Thanks for writing this, fashion journalism needs more of this.
Excellent perspective on the friction-filled layers of wildly successful ownership. One cannot own the handbag without the fingerprints of the hands that toiled to bring it to existence. Three weeks ago, in Milan, I visited the original Prada store (not fact checked - a description provided by the seductive sales associate), with a dad I was traveling with and our two 10 year old daughters. The girls walked out with handbags, I walked out with a photograph of them beaming with pride, clutching the most valuable item in their young wardrobes. Clueless owners to a system of manufacture they can't begin to imagine. Part of me wishes I could show that photo to the real people that made the bag to see the delight their work created, part of me wishes they were holding melting gelatos instead of Prada bags.
Fantastic piece! Around every corner, I am reminded how great you are at your jobs. There is simply not enough of this caliber of writing around on this subject. Incredible.
Ouch! My fingers are bleeding! The journalism is too incisive!
“…that it’s tempting to call Prada a petrochemical firm masquerading as a fashion company. “
Wow. Powerful.
I imagine she laughs quite a bit that Maria Bianchi has gotten all these people to call her “Mrs. Prada.”
I always thought the fact that they yelled at each other was kind of endearing. As a child of the Mediterranean I appreciate that love language. I remember when all the teachers from my kids’ fancy pants Reggio Emilia nursery school went on a field trip to an actual Reggio Emilia nursery school and were shocked that the teachers yelled at the kids all day long lol.
So, so good, guys. You're on FIRE!
“Billionaires” and “the social good” exist in an inverse relationship." Yup. How any can argue the inverse is absurd and untenable.
Thank you for digging into this. Have you read Piketty's Brief History of Equality? Arguments about creativity being stifled if earning potential/income is capped is elegantly debunked. And if you 'accidentally' make billions as a musician or film-maker, how defensible? On the shoulders of all those before and around us. We have the right, a duty, to be creative, to work, but not to the fruits of that process. (BG)
So appreciate your (plural) writings, your perspectives. Keep at it, please.
haven't tapped in to any of my french king piketty's writings, despite meaning to for ages... i will put it on the list after anna karenina ; )
"If we only conceive of fashion’s political dimension along a symbolic axis, they may feel like it." This is a mach 3+ sentence if I've ever read one.
Love love love this! Thank you!