Beneath the glass domes of Milan’s Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, the historic Prada Donna store hosts a project that goes far beyond the usual fashion-world collaborations and tributes. It’s a homage to the eclectic and deeply human design philosophy of Cini Boeri, Milanese architect and designer, marking one hundred years since her birth.
Prada e l’Archivio Cini Boeri hanno quindi presentato una riedizione limitata di 100 pezzi della borsa che Boeri disegnò nel 2018 per Prada Invites, iniziativa che aveva coinvolto anche le archistar Elizabeth Diller e Kazuyo Sejima. Tre sguardi femminili, tre visioni architettoniche, un materiale comune: il nylon. Ma tra le tre, quella di Boeri spicca per semplicità radicale e poetica funzionalità.
Prada and the Archivio Cini Boeri have presented a limited reissue of 100 pieces of the bag Boeri designed in 2018 for Prada Invites, an initiative that also featured architectural icons Elizabeth Diller and Kazuyo Sejima. Three female perspectives, three architectural visions, one shared material: nylon. Yet Boeri’s approach stands out for its radical simplicity and poetic functionality.
In a letter Cini wrote to Miuccia Prada in 2018, her design philosophy comes through with clarity: «Designing a bag, for me, means creating something simplified in its use, easier to carry, and visually appropriate. Pockets first and foremost, handles to lift it, and a good, simple internal setup».
Boeri’s bag is a portable manifesto of her design thinking. Not a decorative accessory, but an extension of the body and the movements of the wearer. It’s flexible, expandable, adjustable: every element is conceived to adapt, not to dominate. A product that doesn’t impose rules but opens up possibilities. Pure Boeri.
At the heart of the project is the desire to encourage user autonomy. The bag includes a modular component with extra pockets that can be easily removed. A pocket-sized architecture, echoing her famed modular domestic spaces—always designed on a human scale.
Today, this iconic bag returns in a future-forward form: it is crafted in black Re-Nylon, a regenerated nylon made from recycled plastics collected from the ocean, fishing nets, and textile waste. A material choice that reflects the contemporary urgency for responsible design, fully aligned with Boeri’s ever-ethical vision. A commemorative tag features her signature and the centenary of her birth, transforming the accessory into a small act of remembrance.
«It’s difficult nowadays to design an object that says something new, that has a certain flexibility of use. The only truly clear motivation I feel is to move away from all those eccentric shapes that have flooded our planet in recent years […] and to think of something that can be seen and used quietly and pleasantly, from yesterday to eternity».
With this reissue, Prada isn’t just celebrating a bag, but reviving a design philosophy that remains as relevant as ever—a philosophy drawn from the archive, yet destined to speak to both present and future. From yesterday to eternity, just as Cini intended.
