The Best Prada Handbags (and Their Histories) to Shop Right Now, From the Galleria to the Re-Nylon Backpack

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The Best Prada Handbags (and Their Histories) to Shop Right Now, From the Galleria to the Re-Nylon Backpack | Vogue

Products are independently selected by our editors. We may earn an affiliate commission from links. Talk to a mathematician or an architect and they’ll tell you the triangle is the strongest, most

Products are independently selected by our editors. We may earn an affiliate commission from links.

Talk to a mathematician or an architect and they’ll tell you the triangle is the strongest, most powerful shape. Ask any fashion-minded individual and they’ll say the very same—especially if it’s flipped upside down, is stamped with "dal 1913," and adorns a Prada handbag.

According to the Italian maison, the triangle’s reputation precedes it: “Precise, direct, meaningful, it is a shape that resonates without words.” While it was Prada’s founder, Mario Prada (grandfather of Miuccia), who first used the tri-cornered shape, it was undoubtedly Miuccia who helped embed it into popular culture via her global ready-to-wear (and now pastries!) label.

Beginning in 1913, Mario and his brother Martino—the Fratelli Prada, as they were known—operated a leathergoods and luggage emporium out of Milan’s Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II shopping pavilion. The store, stocked with a combination of made-in-Italy bags and travel trunks imported from England, catered to the well-heeled locals, including the country’s aristocrats. At the time, Prada earned the honor of being an “Official Supplier of the Italian Royal Household.”

It wasn’t until Miuccia took over the business, however (prior to Miuccia’s creative leadership, the label was helmed by her mother, Luisa, for nearly 20 years), that Prada became what it is today. Like the triangle, Prada needs no introduction; its success has largely been attributed to Miuccia’s advocacy for “ugly chic” and the designer’s feminist philosophies, informed by her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Milan. (She also, iconically, studied pantomime.)

“I’m always trying to do something that is…never to please men in the most banal way,” Muiccia told WWD in 2013. It’s this exact sort of thinking that led Miuccia to fancy nylon, a workaday fabric with primarily utilitarian applications, over silk and leather (“Suddenly, nylon started to look more intriguing to me than couture fabrics,” Miuccia has said). She introduced her Vela backpack in 1984, and the rest is fashion handbag history. All about the Vela, and all of the most iconic Prada handbags, below.

From the 2023 leathergoods campaign. Image: Courtesy of Prada

Spend 15 minutes on fashion TikTok and you’ll be convinced that the aughts were a great time in fashion—especially for Prada. The decade birthed some of the maison’s best-known bags, examples so incredible they’ve been reintroduced and remixed several times over. In 2007 Miuccia introduced the Galleria, a rectangular bag crafted in elegantly textured Saffiano leather (a material patented by Mario Prada) with two top handles, two zipper closures, and another compartment in between. Today, the bag consists of 83 hand-finished pieces. Named after the gleaming Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II that housed the first-ever Prada boutique, the elegant bag was bound to find a permanent place within Prada’s delightfully crowded hall of handbag fame. For spring 2023, Prada reimagined its classic bag—the rectangular shape offering a blank canvas for artistic intervention—with splashes of pop colors. The special-edition bags were introduced in a campaign by conceptual artist Alex Da Corte starring Scarlett Johansson, and have already appeared on the arms of Katie Holmes, Gabrielle Union, and Karlie Kloss.

Prada Galleria Saffiano Special Edition bag

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Prada Galleria Saffiano Special Edition bag

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Prada Galleria Saffiano leather bag

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Prada Galleria Saffiano leather mini-bag

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Prada Galleria Saffiano leather mini-bag

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Galleria Saffiano leather bag

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From the Multiple Views SS 2021 collection. Image: Courtesy of Prada

Relatively new on the Prada handbag scene is the Cleo, a satchel with a youthful spirit and curved lines that seem to bounce with energy. Crafted in brushed calfskin and lightweight spazzolato calf leather (a glossy leather slightly less slick than patent), the Cleo first captured our attention on the arms of the models who walked in the Multiple Views spring/summer 2021 womenswear collection (a year shy of Raf Simons’ appointment as co-creative director). Currently, the Cleo is offered in inky black, milky whites, and a powdery pistachio hue. Of course, it also comes in a bedazzled iteration for those who want something that can catch the light a bit more. Two silhouettes (a flap style or one with an interior snap closure) make Cleo twice as nice.

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Cleo shoulder bag

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Prada Cleo shoulder bag

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Prada Cleo satin bag with crystals

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Prada Cleo shoulder bag

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Prada Cleo shoulder bag with flap

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Prada Cleo shoulder bag with flap

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From the SS 2018 campaign. Image: Courtesy of Prada

Then-teenage millennials might have first been introduced to this bag in the 1999 rom-com 10 Things I Hate About You. (“I like my Skechers, but I love my Prada backpack.”) Lucky for them, they’d soon be able to shop the bag in a new fabrication: a synthetic nylon textile called Econyl, which is woven from recycled, purified plastic material collected from the ocean. Dubbed the Re-Nylon Backpack since its reintroduction in 2019, the style was originally known as the Vela and represented the first application of Miuccia’s ingenious impulse to embrace the utilitarian textile. She did to nylon what Gabrielle Chanel did to jersey, and now it features heavily across all of Prada’s categories—from midi-skirts to puffed-up boots and sneakers. The Re-Nylon Backpack is currently offered in regular and medium sizes, and it’s just as lovable as it was back then.

Prada Re-Nylon backpack

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Prada Re-Nylon backpack

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Prada Re-Nylon backpack

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Prada Re-Nylon backpack

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From the SS 2023 runway. Image: Courtesy of Prada

A tote bag is an essential. Thankfully, Mrs. Prada tends to give her patrons a roomy one in a novel textile every couple of seasons. There’s a padded Re-Nylon and a coveted crochet iteration that’s been slung on the arms of It girls for the past two summers, and as of spring 2023, there’s also a version in a crinkly nappa antique leather. Created using a labor-intensive process that involves wrinkling the material by hand, this handbag is about as Prada as it gets—epitomizing the brand’s transmogrification of the disagreeable into the downright gorgeous. In a variety of saturated leather dyes, the bag comes in two (small and medium) “portrait-oriented bags and one (large) “landscape”-oriented bag.