Prada’s Milan exhibition targets €100 million in annual revenue

By Amara Osei

Prada expects its new Pradasphere exhibition in Milan to add €100 million ($111 million) in annual revenue, and Lorenzo Bertelli said the target could be surpassed. Prada has made the permanent exhibition the anchor of its expansion in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele shopping arcade. Prada says it is fully booked into the new year.

“The exhibition is a multiplier,” said Bertelli, Prada Group’s chief group marketing officer. “We see that the customers who go through the museum have a completely different perspective of the brand and also they browse the store with completely different minds,” Bertelli said.

Bertelli said visitors tend to spend more after immersing themselves in Prada’s history. Some return to make an additional purchase after walking through all eight Pradasphere spaces.

What does Pradasphere show?

A-line skirts twirl overhead, while silver-covered handbags gleam in a secret underground passage. A prototype spacesuit closes the journey by carrying more than a century of fashion history toward the moon.

Exhibits trace the company to Mario and Martino Prada, who founded Fratelli Prada in 1913 in the historic Galleria. The brothers also designed Prada’s signature inverted triangle logo, a fact the exhibition makes explicit for longtime customers.

The display includes a pleated evening bag with a devilish, head-shaped clasp and its tongue sticking out. The detail appeared on the Spring-Summer 2024 runway. Longtime Prada customers may never have seen the bag in person.

Miuccia Prada’s third-generation entry into the family business is represented by trademark nylon bags she began designing in the 1970s. Those bags embody Prada’s high-low, industrial-luxury paradox. A chocolate-brown opera coat from her first runway collection, presented in 1988, also appears.

Runway highlights include the 2012 Flame heels and Formica tile prints that gave birth to Prada’s “ugly chic” reputation. The exhibition also tracks Miuccia Prada’s and Patrizio Bertelli’s work across art, architecture, film and sport.

Lorenzo Bertelli, 38, has been identified as the future leader of Prada Group. He also serves as executive chairman of Versace and is the son of creative director Miuccia Prada and Prada Group chairman Patrizio Bertelli.

“Curiosity and having fun is what drives my parents,” the younger Bertelli said. Experimentation does not always bring immediate financial success, “but for sure it drives the enrichment of our story, and our culture and our knowledge.”

How did fashion materials reach the moon?

Bertelli cited investments in sports and engineering, including the formation of the Luna Rossa America’s Cup sailing team in the 1990s. He said the work built materials expertise that led Prada to collaborate with Axiom Space on a space suit.

Prada helped design the suit’s outer layer, which is engineered to withstand extreme thermal conditions. It also helped design a high-performance inner layer focused on thermal regulation and comfort. The prototype displayed at the exhibition is intended for astronauts walking on the moon on NASA’s Artemis IV mission, targeted for 2028.

What has changed inside the Galleria?

Just 20 visitors enter Pradasphere each hour by appointment, according to Prada. The compact exhibition contains eight rooms that Bertelli said will remain in constant evolution.

Prada’s Galleria presence now spans eight floors. It combines the existing Marchesi 1824 pastry shop and Osservatorio Fondazione Prada contemporary art space with the new exhibition, a private salon and an apartment.

Most visitors finish in a secret underground passage connecting the menswear and womenswear boutiques. The womenswear boutique occupies the original Fratelli Prada premises. The passage also holds lesser-known chapters from the brand’s history.

One artifact is a chandelier dress created for Baz Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby.” It is one of the lesser-known chapters displayed in the underground passage.

“It was a great experience,” said Luca Missio, an architect from Udine in northeastern Italy. “I recognized the stores I’ve visited around the world, in Tokyo and New York, in the models and displays. That was lovely.”

The commercial test is repeat spending after visitors leave the exhibition. With bookings already extending into the new year, Prada’s €100 million annual-revenue projection hinges on whether that uplift persists once the current bookings are fulfilled.