Like a modern Medici with matching accessories, Miuccia Prada and hereponymous fashion house have becomesynonymous with a shrewdly intrepidapproach to architectural patronage. Since1999, Prada has embarked on a programmeof new store designs and brand expansionthrough a select stellar cabal of the avantgarde(Rem Koolhaas, Kazuyo Sejima, andHerzog & de Meuron). Though the worlds ofarchitecture and fashion have a fertile andoften colourful reciprocity, this goes beyondthe periodic tasteful fit-out into a moreserious (and big budget) exploration of theradical that aims to reinvent the simple act ofclothes shopping into a singular experience –consumerism as culture or religion andshops as carefully choreographedenvironments or temples. (Perhaps not sodifferent from the Medicis after all