Vintage Prada Bags are Back Big Time

Deep in the heart of the Texan desert, where the vast, gravelly plains and paltry plantation stretch on for as far as the eyes can see (save for the inky asphalt of an equally endless road that would put the wicked witch’s yellow-brick number to utter shame), some 37 miles off the nearest human settlement – the quaint cowboy-town of Marfa – there lies *checks notes* a Prada store. 

This, dear reader, is Prada Marfa, an artistic installation (yes, it’s not just a Prada store in the middle of nowhere, it’s a fake Prada store in the middle of nowhere) by the Scandinavian duo Elmgreen & Dragset that’s been open to the public since 2005.

That’s art right there, folks.

Yet, a (replica) high-end designer outlet (quite literally) in the wild, wild West is uncannily on-brand for one Mrs. Miuccia Prada, whose deliciously subversive rebellion against the decades-old diktats of fashion has included a motley assortment of cartoon car-printed pencil skirts, sliding down office windows, and declaring a 69-year-old Jeff Goldblum the hot new it girl.

As Amy Odell writes of the latter’s watershed runway debut, “a fashion moment that rocked the internet… like the footsteps of a hungry T-Rex bioengineered by humans from the blood of an amber-preserved mosquito.”

It’s small wonder, therefore, that vintage Prada purses are suddenly all the rage amongst the fashion girlies. 

A Strong & Steady Bestseller

Now, while Madame Miuccia’s fame came calling early in the ’80s with those anachronistic technical nylon backpacks, of particular note within today’s rave of revivals remains the sleek bowler bag.

“One can think of any number of hit bags,” wrote the New York Times in 2002, “all memorably named and all gathering impressive numbers: at the top, the Fendi baguette (600,000) and the Prada bowling ball bag (160,000).”

And indeed, soon after its launch in the Spring 2000 lineup, the bowler – a sporty silhouette inspired by the bags bowlers carry their balls in (we see what you did there, Mrs. Prada!) – was swiftly propelled to it-status. Its rounded corners, slick leathers, and sensually curved handles later burrowed their way onto the catwalks of Galliano’s Dior and Jacobs’ Vuitton too.

But Madame Prada was also wary of its success.

”Well, I hate bags because I’m a snob,” she says in that same NYT piece, “Any time a bag is selling too much, it can destroy your image.” 

The bowler, as a result, was soon phased out, only to be reissued in 2012 for the Impossible Conversations capsule at the Costume Institute’s Schiaparelli and Prada exhibition, and later again 2020 in commemoration of the bag’s 20th anniversary.

Most recently, Bad Bunny rolled up to the steps of the Met in a custom Prada look, complete with a handheld number from the men’s FW25 show that’d been blown up to comically oversized proportions. Bagless on the red carpet? Trust Mrs. Prada to prove us wrong!

The Power of the Prada Purse

Balls and bowlers aside (teehee), there’s something about that unmistakable enamel Prada triangle, especially on purses of the vintage veneer, that’s become a core memory of sorts in those bag-obsessed corners of our fashion-loving brains.

Amid the myriad mini-skirts, low-slung jeans, and velour sweats that pollute our minds in all their pink Paris Hilton glory, Prada’s nylon was a comforting constant, grounding our swanky, The Simple Life-esque fantasies with a healthy side of realistic aspiration.

For instance, Faran Krentcil of the Wall Street Journal attributes her fashion-writer origin story to “a navy nylon Prada purse, salvaged from a Boston thrift store when I was a teen in the 1990s. Scuffed with black streaks and sagging, it was terribly beat-up. But I saw it as a golden ticket to a future, chicer self.”

Eventually, it did lead Krentcil to land a magazine internship.

Harper’s Bazaar’s Chelsea Sanchez has similarly slung her hand-me-down nylon hobo unearthed from her mother’s closet “like some sacred rite of passage, a symbol conferring my transformation from girl to woman,” from laundromats and Tinder dates to “the sun-drenched alleyways of Santorini.”

Even the celeb set isn’t immune to the charms of a well-loved Prada. Quasi-Gen-Z it-girl Bella Hadid has consistently been spotted with underrated past-hits (and the occasional misses) like the Re-Edition 2000, as well as the Militaire Tessuto Active Nylon Shoulder Bag – a bulbous, utilitarian piece “balanced out by its entertainingly useless buckles.”

And of course, who amongst us, like fellow PurseBlogger Lucy, haven’t drooled from our dorms on those pap-snaps of Hillary Duff with the limited-edition Prada Fairy bag? Well, fun fact, new-age it-girl Devon Lee Carlson recently posted a seemingly uncurated Instagram photo-montage: matcha-latte, wired headphones, and that coveted Fairy bag dangling insouciantly from her arms!

If that’s not staying power, then what is!

The Great Reference Epidemic

References, of course, are nothing nouvelle within the world of high fashion (some, like the Prada Margaux, can, however, get a little too on the nose). And what with the slew of archival revivals populating our timelines, what’s really surprising is that designers haven’t yet run out of things to reference!

But 2025—in online parlance—has been dubbed the year of “reheating your nachos,” i.e., when the referencing and rehashing loses its novelty and nostalgia and simply becomes, well, dry reruns.

Anthony Vaccarello’s mining of the Saint Laurent archives? Reheating nachos done right. Sarah Pidgeon’s flatironed (incorrectly blonde) tresses and empty (and incorrectly sized) Birkin playing Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy on the set of Ryan Murphy’s American Love Story? Well, not so much.

But even among the numerous nacho-reheating repeat-offenders, Mrs. Prada holds a unique position as one of fashion’s most self-referential designers. Her exploration into ugly-chic for SS96, its subsequent subversion as Sincere Chic for SS00, and finally its re-exploration in her SS21 lineup (not to mention the parallels shared between Miu Miu FW25 and AW95) – remain legendary.

Sarah Mower even wrote, “Looking around the guests at the show and the models on the runway, it’s clear that all this will come as completely fresh, as they weren’t even born in that century,” before adding, “Nothing wrong with that. Miuccia Prada earned the right to quote herself years ago.”

Is the new Prada Moon Bag nearly the same as that 2002 version, which, at a sales figure of 69,630, “probably sold more than Mombasa,” as accessories designer Fabio Zanbernardi reported? Yes, ye,s it is. Is the Re-Edition 1995 virtually indistinguishable from the version CBK toted as she pranced around New York with John F. Kennedy Jr.? Also yes!

But like Carolyn-Bessette herself, who’s been endlessly commodified and moodboarded into oblivion, Miuccia Prada’s essence, too, remains tough to distill into a singular product, be it a fresh-off-the-runway purse or one you scoured for hours on eBay. Wearing them is the equivalent of Olivia Rodrigo showing up to Vogue’s 73 Questions in the Versace mini-dress she copped from Chloë Sevigny’s closet sale – it’s cultural currency at its best.

Because while Madame Miuccia notably had a PhD in political science and was a staunch, upstanding member of the Union of Italian Women, she’s also trained as a mime. And at the end of the day, everything that she puts on the runway, be it Formica-printed skirts or an archival leather satchel, all share that playful unseriousness of the woman herself.

It’s a wink at those puritanical tenets of luxury, and we just can’t get enough!

Featured image via Prada