BILLION-DOLLAR BAG LADY

Intelligent is an adjective seldom used in fashion, and rarely to describe designers. 'Inspired'? Such people are a dime a dozen. 'Revolutionary'? That's once a season. 'Avant-garde'? A term so misused we no longer remember its meaning.

Miuccia Prada is all of the above. It comes across in her clothes: they're well thought out, wearable, witty ... and made for men and women with more than shopping on their minds (although Signora Prada, as she is to her staff, has been known to bring out the consumer impulse in the best of us). Their secret lies in an innate, and yet unobtrusive, complexity that originates in Prada herself.

Born in 1950 to an old-money family in Milan, she is a bundle of contradictions. As a student of political science she was active in the Italian Communist Party - while wearing Yves Saint Laurent. Although chronically shy she has also studied mime. And even though she and her husband Patrizio Bertelli own Prada Group, the US$1.75 billion (HK$14.8 billion) powerhouse that also oversees Jil Sander, Helmut Lang, Genny and Church's shoes, she has expressed her support for anti-globalisation protesters.

Her success, famously, can be traced to a rucksack. After inheriting a small, family-run luggage business from her mother in the late '70s, Prada decided to make bags in industrial-strength black nylon - a fabric used by the Italian Army. Those items quickly came to define the minimalist '90s, first with the fashion cognoscenti and then the label-mad masses. This is Prada's gift: an ability to divine exactly what we want before we want it. Wacky wallpaper prints, techno sportswear, funny bowling bags and clunky, orthopaedic shoes: they all looked awkward, even ugly, at first, but then we bought them in bulk. By which point Prada had gone in the opposite direction, making chic, bourgeouis basics and - believe it or not - this season's brocades and lame.

Now, post-September 11, when forecasts for luxury groups are looking anything but bright (last year, the Prada group twice postponed its plans to go public, and in November sold its share of Fendi to LVMH), Prada retains her radical spirit. Her latest scheme, featuring four ambitious, experimental retail projects by architects Rem Koolhaas and Herzog & de Meuron (of Tate Modern fame), could be her biggest gamble yet. The first 'epicentre' store, estimated to cost US$40 million, recently opened in the old Guggenheim Soho museum in New York. Less boutique than conceptual/technological showcase, it features an enormous, zebra-wood 'wave' that spans two floors and becomes a stage for performances, glass changing rooms that frost over at the touch of a button, and suspended display cages that move around the ceiling like a mobile city.

When I meet her, less than 24 hours before the shop is set to open, she is perched at the checkout, cup of tea in hand. Workers are scrambling, security alarms are going off, everyone seems frantic except for Prada, who, despite rumours that she is highly strung, is calm, giggly, even girlish. She is wearing a charcoal-grey suit, antique brooch, gorgeous earrings and, in mid-winter, a pair of flat, strappy sandals.

Is it true you once studied to be a mime artist? (Laughing) Yes, it's true. It was an excuse not to talk. I've always been shy.