Leather Report
“To be Prada is to be perfect in every way,” reads one of the few examples of actual prose in Prada (Abrams, $125), the luxury-goods company’s latest and largest coffee-table book. It’s an image-heavy tome about image, and words are relegated to captions. The form makes clear what no corporate-authorized text could be expected to state outright: Prada, no differently from any other global brand, traffics in image.
Few companies seem as riven with contradictions as Prada. While its products are called “luxury,” it remains best known for a line of leather-trimmed black nylon handbags that were