For decades, the fiercely independent Prada SpA Chairman Patrizio Bertelli talked about the need for Italian fashion houses to acquire size and scale to take on sprawling industry behemoths like LVMH and Kering SA and also avoid being gobbled up by them.
And yet his efforts to add heft to the Milan-based company he controls with his wife Miuccia Prada through an acquisition binge in the late 1990s left the group saddled with more than €1 billion ($1.13 billion) in debt and later forced the couple to seek help from Italian banks to prevent losing control.
More than a quarter century on, the family — including the couple’s oldest son Lorenzo, Bertelli’s designated successor — is seeking a different outcome from the biggest acquisition in Prada’s 112-year history: Versace.
Prada on Thursday agreed to buy the brand founded in the 1970s by late designer Gianni Versace from Capri Holdings Ltd. for €1.25 billion. The amount was significantly less than the initial asking price of more than €2 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. Prada even squeezed out a last-minute discount on the agreed €1.4 billion-euro price following the turmoil created by US President Donald Trump’s tariff push. The final price tag could be lower still, following several adjustments.
Adding Versace to Prada’s small yet growing stable of brands may give the Italian house the ability to stand alone in the fight for customers against the world’s biggest luxury giants as key markets like China and the US weaken. The bulk it adds strengthens the succession plans of the Prada-Bertelli family, which owns 80% of Prada. Miuccia, 76, and Patrizio, 79, have been determined to hand over the reins of the company to Lorenzo in a way that ensures the fashion house can maintain its independence.
Guaranteeing succession is a critical issue for Italian family-controlled businesses. Over the years, they have seen one brand after another scooped up by bigger global players. LVMH owns Fendi and Loro Piana and last year bought a stake in the company that controls Moncler SpA. Kering owns Gucci, Bottega Veneta and has an option to gain control of Valentino. For the families behind these brands, it has meant a loss of control.
Lorenzo, 36, a former rally driver who joined the family business about six years ago, is currently the head of marketing and social responsibility at Prada. He’s set to take over his father’s responsibilities in coming years.
In Versace, Prada gets a brand with a polar-opposite aesthetic, widening its range. While designer Miuccia has created her “ugly chic” style at Prada, Versace has been known for its elaborate, ornate designs and its signature Barocco print.
“Versace’s distinctive aesthetic fits perfectly into our portfolio, adding creative and customer complementarity,” Lorenzo said. “As we’ve seen in recent years, unlocking a brand’s full potential doesn’t necessarily require a revolution, but rather an evolution through small and constant steps.”
Prada’s purchase comes after record 2024 results, thanks to its Miu Miu label, which caters to younger consumers and helped it weather the recent global downturn in high-end fashion. But taking on a troubled label, which while still a global name is far removed from its heyday in the 1980s and 1990s, may be a risky undertaking in the current climate for the luxury sector.
“We see the relaunch as a long and demanding process, which slightly dilutes the equity story of visible and consistent growth of the two main brands, Prada and Miu Miu,” said Paola Carboni, an analyst at Equita, in a note to clients. Prada, which went public through a 2011 IPO in Hong Kong, has fallen more than 30% from its mid-February record high.
Prada has already warned that fixing Versace will take time. The decision to buy it was “for the long term, for long-term success,” Chief Executive Officer Andrea Guerra said.
Prada plans to run Versace as a separate unit, as it does with Miu Miu, said the people who asked not to be named discussing private plans. Miuccia, or “La Signora” as she’s known at the company, won’t be designing any collections for Versace, which recently hired Dario Vitale, formerly of Miu Miu, as its chief creative officer, following the departure of longtime designer Donatella Versace.
Prada will have to decide on the direction the brand needs to take to turn its fortunes around.
In a heartening note for Italy’s family businesses, the deal has brought together two of the best-known clans of the country’s famed fashion industry, a fact that was welcomed by Donatella, who stepped down in March as Versace’s creative director. It was a role she had taken over in 1997, when her brother Gianni was killed outside his home in Florida.
“I am absolutely delighted for Versace to become part of the Prada family. Gianni and I have always had a huge admiration for Miuccia, Patrizio and their family,” Donatella wrote in a post on Instagram.
UK consumers spent £26.2 billion online in Q1 and £8.8 billion in March alone, the latter figure being a 3.5% increase year on year that included a spending boom for summer dresses.
Photo: & Other Stories
That’s according to data from Adobe Analytics, which said that high temperatures and low prices fuelled the sales growth.
The data is based on actual online transactions from tracking hundreds of millions of visits to retail sites by UK consumers every month. It also monitors the online prices of 100 million SKUs across 18 product categories.
With the UK enjoying the sunniest March on record, consumers started spending on warm-weather related items such as outdoor furniture earlier than usual, heading online to find the best deals.
In fact, online spending on outdoor furniture in March was up 86% compared to February. While the assumption would be that every year early spring spending on outdoor goods would increase compared to that in late winter, to highlight just how different March 2025 was, such spending rose ‘only’ 56% in March 2024.
Shoppers were also spending more on home décor and summer clothing, such as dresses, compared to previous years.
Home décor spending was up 21% on February’s figures, compared with just an 8% increase over the same period in 2024, while spending on dresses in March this year boomed by 23% on February’s figures, compared to just a 4% increase in 2024.
Mother’s Day, which fell almost three weeks later this year compared with 2024, also contributed to increased sales of flowers, hampers, and related gifts. Compared with February, online spending on popular Mother’s Day gift items increased by 18% on February’s figures, a 29% swing on 2024’s figures, which saw spending decline by 11% over the same period. Gift cards were another favourite, with sales jumping 36% compared to February, outpacing last year’s increase of 20% during the same period.
As mentioned, low prices were a key driver as well as sunny weather and Adobe said that overall, online prices for essential items fell by 1.5% compared to February, easing the pressure on shopper’s budgets. Plenty of food and drink prices were down and personal care product prices dropped 2.6% from February.
“March brought a fresh sense of optimism for UK shoppers, with warmer weather and lower prices for essential items encouraging overall growth in online spending,” said Vivek Pandya, lead analyst, Adobe Digital Insights. “As retailers enter a period of increased operating costs and uncertainty, they will need to find the right balance between protecting their margins and keeping prices low enough to maintain the healthy levels of demand and online spending we’ve seen since the start of the year.”
It’s interesting too that Adobe said UK consumers continued to make use of AI services for shopping in March. The data found that traffic to online retail sites originating from AI and generative AI sources grew by 20% compared with February and they were up 790% since August 2024.
A survey of 2,000 UK consumers commissioned by Adobe in February found that more than a third (35%) have used AI assistants when shopping online, for research (46%), sourcing product recommendations (44%), creating shopping lists (38%), gift inspiration (37%) and finding the best prices for products (29%).
Chanel continues to put support behind its latest Chance variant, Eau Splendide, as well as its existing variants following the recent announcement of pop star Angèle as the new scent’s face.
Chanel
Its latest initiative is the Chance Street pop-up in Shoreditch, London, which is open now until 5 May.
The “immersive and interactive” space allows visitors to “Take a Chance” while celebrating the new variant and the Chance brand in general.
The outside of the Chance space is painted in a bespoke, pop art-inspired mural highlighting the custom purple hue of the new fragrance.
Visitors can try their luck at engaging and unexpected games, while discovering the various Chance scents. There’s a fragrance discovery bar offering home a deeper dive into Chance itself, as well as into Chance Eau Fraîche, Chance Eau Tendre, Chance Eau Vive and, of course, Eau Splendide.
And there’s complimentary candy floss inspired by the new fragrance on offer too.
The space replicates the hall of mirrors seen in the new Eau Splendide film, which is also the inspiration behind the mural seen at the pop-up.
Much of what’s available there is free but there are bookable paid-for services too, such as a £60, 75-minute personalised make-up look. Then there’s a £60, 120-minutes evening event including a live DJ plus cocktails and canapés. The booking fee is redeemable against purchases at the pop-up and includes an elevated goodie bag.
M&S shares fell by over 2% on Monday morning after the company had been forced to pause online sales in the UK, Ireland and beyond due to a cyber attack.
M&S
The shares had also fallen on Friday when news of the online pause was first released.
M&S had issued a release about the cyber attack earlier in the week and despite few details being available, it was reported that shoppers were having trouble paying via contactless in-store.
That in itself was bad enough, but having to completely stop online orders (including via some of its international websites) is a major disruption for the business, especially at a time when summer-season-related goods from fashion to foods could be expected to boom in a mini heatwave.
The website is still open for shoppers to browse and add products to their basket but a discreet note at the top of the page mentions the transactional pause.
The shares had slumped around 5% on Friday, wiping millions of pounds off its market value. The share price had peaked this year at 411.3p as recently as 17 April but is now down over 8% in the past five trading days at 376.4p, giving M&S a market value of £7.74 billion.
The company is working with external cyber security experts as it investigates and manages the incident and has also reported it to the National Cyber Security Centre.
Several days of no online sales could put a major dent in M&S’s figures when it next reports its results Last year, M&S said its current 9.4 million regular online customers account for 33% of total sales. The retailer has said it wants half of its fashion and homeware sales to be taking place online eventually.
Its total sales rose 5.8% to £6.524 billion in the first half and it’s due to report figures for the full year late next month.
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