Victoria Tarantino ’16 combined her love of fashion and women’s studies at Prada in NYC.
During my time at Prada, I worked underneath the Public Relations Managers and Assistants of the men and women’s collections. My main responsibilities included collecting both digital and print press clippings of any mentions of Prada or its brands (Miu Miu, Chuch’s and Carshoe). I was also responsible for taking inventories of samples, pulling samples for sendouts, delivering samples for photoshoots, trafficking magazines to employees, and updating the expected credit reports, which I had predicted in my proposal. I would constantly ask for new projects and offer my help in any way possible because I wanted to learn as much as I could about both fashion PR and Prada.
I also worked closely with the Logistics department, who handled actual samples and their trafficking. While working with the team, I got hands on experience with the clothing. I was able to help them pull pieces, process returns, and be on my feet. I also got to spend some time working with the Senior Manager of VIP Relations, and I would always make myself available to her whenever she needed help because I found her department and projects to interest me the most. For her I worked on competitor reports that would compile which celebrities were wearing our competitor designers to events. Miuccia Prada herself would be viewing these competitor reports that I worked on. I was able to find connections between Prada and my academic studies as a Women’s Studies major. Miuccia Prada uses her designs to focus on the challenging gender norms and traditional gender dynamics in the clothes themselves, on the runway, and in her advertising campaigns.