Miuccia Prada on Dating, Women, Clothes and Purpose

Photo via Google, Interview by Michael Hainey for GQ

GQ: My first memory of an Italian woman is Sophia Loren. Do you have a first memory of American men? Maybe how they dressed?

MP: I’m not interested in how people dress. Of course, I recognize if somebody’s elegant. But fashion doesn’t interest me. People interest me. If you ask, do you like strong men or weak men, I’d say, I like who I like. 

GQ: Okay, so no fashion questions. Who was the first boy you were ever in love with? 

MP: I will never answer that question. [laughs] 

GQ: How old were you when you first… 

MP: Eh! 

GQ: Do you remember the first boy you had a crush on? 

MP: I started kind of young. I think around 13. Twelve. 

GQ: What did you learn? 

MP: [laughs] I will never answer. 

GQ: Okay, look—I’ll go first. You know what I told a girl the other day? 

MP: That you had another girl and she should give it up? 

GQ: No. 

MP: What did you say to her? 

GQ: Well, I was on a date— 

MP: The process of a date, I think, is terrible. Horrible. Because everything is banal and predicted. 

GQ: It’s like this interview—it’s sort of a bad date. You certainly don’t want to be here, right? 

MP: No! This is not true. I just hate talking about myself. 

GQ: The problem with dates is that they’re programmed seduction—you have to show up and try to seduce the person. Right? And life isn’t like that. Life is about the accidental, unscheduled seduction. 

MP: Seduction is a matter of feelings and people opening themselves. I don’t think it’s something tricky—it’s being human. And everybody is seduced by something different. You want a little bit of champagne? 

GQ: Champagne? Yeah, that’d be great. 

MP: Yes? 

GQ: Absolutely. 

MP: Good. [A minute later, an assistant enters with champagne and two glasses.] Tell me about dates and dating. Is it true what you read in magazines—that there is the thing you have to do on the first date and the thing you have to do on the second date, and then by the third date you can get—what do you say, carried over? 

GQ: You mean, have sex? In New York, yes. That’s how it goes, usually. 

MP: Yes? New York really must be terrible. 

GQ: You know that show Sex and the City? 

MP: Embarrassing! I was thinking New York is like that. I have the impression that the people are like that—the women, the bitchiness. 

GQ: The thing is, too many women see that show and they think that’s how their life should be. Rather than create their life, they imitate a stupid show. And that’s the worst thing you can do. Right? 

MP: Oh no, it’s terrible. Also the way of total and sure unhappiness. It’s what I say all the time to my girls in the office here: The more they dress for sex, the less they will have love or sex. These girls throw away so much energy in this search for beauty and sexiness. I think that the old rules were much more clever and better than the rules now. The trouble is, most people are not so generous. Everybody wants love for themselves. I hear this all the time from the women I work with. I hear them say, “I want, I want.” I never hear them saying what they want to give. 

GQ: Do you tell them that? 

MP: Yes, of course. They don’t listen. With women, the more unhappy they are, the more undressed they are. This is true. Dignity’s another very important part of this. Sex and the City is the opposite of dignity. You have to have dignity for your body—this is with men and women. You need to have dignity towards how you are, how you dress, how you behave. Very important. Men are always much more dignified than most women. 

posted by cam.