Prada ‘Galleria’ bag unites the house’s past and present – now in colourful new iterations

The grand, domed interior of Milan’s 19th-century shopping arcade Galleria Vittoria Emanuele II has long provided the spiritual home of Italian fashion house Prada, where eponymous founder Mario Prada opened his first store in 1913. Over a century on, in 2007, Miuccia Prada – Mario’s youngest granddaughter and current co-creative director alongside Raf Simons – introduced the ‘Galleria’ handbag, a ladylike ode to the arcade crafted from the house’s signature wax-treated saffiano leather. Deemed by the house a ‘neo-classic’ for its pared-back design with nods to vintage medicine bags from the 1950s, it has since become one of Prada’s most recognisable exports – endlessly riffed upon in a panoply of sizes, colours and textures. 

For A/W 2023, an array of colourful new styles have been introduced, reflecting the work of Venezuelan-American contemporary artist Alex Da Corte, who imagined the accompanying campaign starring Hollywood actress Scarlett Johansson. 

In it, she traverses a colour-soaked terrain, featuring graphic moments of pop art-inspired hues and geometric motifs which are reflected on the bags themselves. In dual-colour designs or featuring chevrons, squares or curves of contrasting shades, the collectable special-edition designs add to the ‘Galleria’s ever-expanding catalogue of iterations, each one completed with the Prada triangle – a leitmotif of the house since its founding, melding past and present as one. 

Watch the film below.

A version of this article appears in the October 2023 Style Issue of Wallpaper*, on sale now available in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

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