Miuccia Prada is an avid collector of antique jewellery, often wearing heirloom pieces—diamond chandeliers, brooches of jade, and Van Cleef & Arpels lion-head chains—during catwalk bows. Many pieces come from Gioielleria Pennisi beneath Milan's Grand Hotel on via Manzoni. The 2022 launch of a Prada fine jewellery line extends this passion by reinterpreting jewellery archetypes and modernising ancient forms alongside co-creative director Raf Simons. The brand's third collection foregrounds bold colour drawn from a recognisably Prada palette. Semi-precious stones are selected for their distinct hues rather than monetary value, echoing Prada's use of unconventional materials in clothing.
Much like Elizabeth Taylor before her, Miuccia Prada has her own love-affair with jewellery - an avid collector, witness the extraordinary antique pieces she often wears to bow at the end of her catwalk shows - delicate diamond chandelier earrings, brooches set with great hunks of jade, even a gold chain necklace studded with golf-ball sized lion's heads by Van Cleef & Arpels. Her fascination with these pieces, of course, extends beyond demonstrations of wealth or mere decoration, neither of which have interested Prada in her design work, nor personal wardrobe.
Jewellery archetypes are simultaneously celebrated and questioned, allusions to ancient forms modernised - in short, the approach of Prada and co-creative director Raf Simons is much the same as within their clothes. That is especially true of the latest fine jewellery offering, the brand's third, pitched as a bold and unadulterated celebration of colour. Not any colour, but those inherently and intrinsically identifiable within a Prada palette.
And as Prada recounted, in the foreword for a book celebrating that store's historic back-catalogue, "I'm fascinated by the way these objects preciously hold, and somehow communicate not only the history and the flavour of an era, but also the history of those who have worn them."
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