To know Laia Garcia-Furtado is to understand that she is intensely, unmistakably obsessed with Prada. Indeed, it is one of her most obvious and celebrated traits within the fashion community. During
her tenure as a senior fashion news editor here at Vogue, she spoke at length about her encyclopedic expertise on Miuccia Prada on our podcast, The Run-Through, and authored countless digital odes and features dedicated to her most beloved Italian design house. So, when she was approached by an editor at Batsford Books with a formal proposal to write a definitive book on Prada, it felt entirely preordained—a collision of passion, professional background, and timing.
“I feel like I’ve been training my entire life for this,” she reflects, looking back on the genesis of the project. Still, even as an experienced editor accustomed to evaluating culture and fashion history with a critical eye, Garcia-Furtado had to undergo a brief moment of self-reflection to ensure the scope of the project did justice to the label’s monumental history. “I quickly remembered that there’s a lot more to ’90s Prada than those legendary collections that came in the second half of the decade,” she explains, noting that the decade was vast, complex, and filled with transitional moments that ultimately reshaped modern luxury.
Her new book, Prada in the Nineties, arrives at a particularly fortuitous moment. It speaks directly to a vibrant new generation of “Miuccia-heads”—younger fashion enthusiasts who are discovering the brand’s historic archives, understated intellect, and subversive elegance through social media platforms, vintage reselling apps, and digital mood boards.
“I think everyone is still so obsessed with the ’90s because, looking back, we think of it as the last decade of a kind of freedom,” Garcia-Furtado explains, analyzing the enduring cultural fascination with the era. “The Internet was barely beginning, and people still dressed to their own spirit.”
For Prada, however, the decade represented something even more transformative. It was the period when the company evolved from a traditional, family-run leather goods house into a global fashion behemoth. She notes that it was precisely during this decade that Mrs. Prada truly discovered her distinct creative voice, as well as the encompassing, intellectual vision for what the brand would one day become. It is a legacy that continues to resonate deeply today, with the designer’s work from that era remaining a constant reference point for contemporary designers across the industry. “All those ’90s collections are still constantly referenced to this day,” she adds.
Even as a devoted scholar of the brand who thought she knew every seam and runway look by heart, the intensive research process yielded a treasure trove of surprising historical information about Mrs. Prada and her creative process. Among the revelations is the fascinating context behind the designer’s spring 1999 collection, which Garcia-Furtado discovered was actually conceived as a subtle, tongue-in-cheek reaction against the prevailing trends of the late 1990s—trends that, ironically, Prada herself had helped to popularize.
“The spring 1999 collection with mirror embellishments was her sort of ‘taking the piss’ to the hippie trend that was happening around the time,” Garcia-Furtado says, illuminating the sharp, understated wit that frequently defines Miuccia Prada’s work. “I love when you see her humor peeking through, and that really reminded me of the lace collection from fall 2008—another one of my all-time favorites—that she said she made because she hated lace.”
Because the book is entirely unauthorized and unapproved by Prada—a fact she wittily and transparently notes right on her cover—Garcia-Furtado had to find creative ways to bring the runway collections to life visually without relying on official brand imagery or corporate archive access. To solve this aesthetic challenge, she tapped illustrator Rachel Song to reimagine her favorite archival moments. The resulting artwork breathes new life into iconic pieces, capturing everything from a striking chinoiserie look on page 133 to the unforgettable spring 1999 bumbag featured on page 167, proving that artistic interpretation can sometimes capture the spirit of fashion just as vividly as photography.
When asked whether she has managed to send an advance copy of the homage to Prada headquarters in Milan yet, Garcia-Furtado offers a pithy, characteristically pragmatic reply that underscores the mystique of the fashion house: “You can’t just reach out to God like that.”
For now, the fashion world will simply have to celebrate the release of Prada in the Nineties on shelves, with readers and fashion historians alike diving deep into the pages. Here is to hoping a copy manages to make its way to Milan regardless.
