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Not one to be outspoken since she lets her designs speak for themselves, Miuccia Prada gave a rare interview to Italian daily, La Repubblica, about the dwindling state of the nation’s fashion industry. 

“With the sale of our luxury labels to foreigners, our entire system risks falling into second league,” she told the newspaper. “If our brands cross the borders, the credit, glamour, fame and decision-making is in the hands of others and we are abandoned, downgraded.”

Though she believes that Italy is still the best nation in the world when it comes to production, Prada fears that fashion is nevertheless marginalized.

“We live in a weak cultural world, we are a country that has never wanted or known how to protect and promote its immense landscape and artistic patrimony.”

She blames the Italian media — which considers fashion “frivolous” without taking into account its socio-economic impact — and the so-called intellectuals and liberal politicians who “remain diffident toward wealth and glamour.”

Mrs. Prada argues that the perception of Italy from the outside world is that of a nation with “less resources, culture, protagonists, ideas, vitality and money,” and that fashion, as it is wont to do, will go ”elsewhere, looking for the best.”

According to the designer,  Italy’s creative talent has already begun to defect, though she says “you can’t blame them,” citing Jil Sander and its former designer Raf Simons as an example.

A former Prada property, Jil Sander, in spite of its eponymous founder’s German roots, has operated out of Italy since 1985 and consistently shows at Milan Fashion Week. Simons, for his part, was ”already highly considered”  but now that he has relocated to Paris and Dior, “his value will further be emphasized.”

Prada herself has chosen to show her Miu Miu line in Paris  in search of “that attraction that is called glamour.” Amen to that. [WWD, Vogue UK]