What Prada is known for

Milanese intellectual luxury since 1913 — nylon revolutions, Galleria bags, and fashion's sharpest brain. In 1919 Prada was appointed Official Supplier to the Italian Royal Household and incorporated the House of Savoy coat of arms and knotted-rope device into its logo. Original Galleria shop still displays mahogany shelving Mario Prada commissioned.

Mario Prada opened his luxury goods shop in Milan's Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in 1913; the original store, with its mahogany fittings, still trades there. The modern house is his granddaughter Miuccia's creation: taking over in 1978, she made the counterintuitive move that defined it — black industrial nylon, the stuff of army tents, turned into handbags and backpacks that made utilitarian anti-luxury the height of fashion. Prada became the intellectual pole of Italian style, its collections read as essays, its Fondazione in Milan a serious contemporary art institution. The nylon (now regenerated Re-Nylon), the Saffiano cross-hatched leather Mario used for trunks, and the triangle logo are the house codes. The Galleria store is the pilgrimage: buy the nylon there, where the house began — the object that proved luxury could be a concept rather than a material.

The Re-Nylon pieces are the historically resonant purchase; in Milan, pair the Galleria store with the Fondazione for the house's full intellectual range.