2007 : March: Prada launches a signature mobile phone with LG Electronics, with the aim of establishing a new product line. It features the world's first fully touch-screen interface. Within eighteen months, more than a million will be sold. July: Designer Azzedine Ala?a buys back his company from Prada Group, which will continue to produce Ala?a's bags and shoes. August: Infusion d'Iris fragrance launches, the first in a series of scent infusions. October: Vanity Fair pegs the luxury behemoth's worth at $3.6 billion. December: E-commerce launched, with site design by Rem Koolhaas's AMO think tank.
1978 : Miuccia Prada meets Patrizio Bertelli. He suggests that she stop selling other brands in the Prada store, rework her grandfather's original luggage and handbag designs, and concentrate production in Italy. Bertelli becomes her mentor, and Prada will later appoint him CEO of her company. (They will marry in 1987.) May: Prada stages a theatrical Stateside launch for her luggage line on the set of the Broadway musical On the Twentieth Century. Made of a lightweight synthetic fabric the brand calls Pocone, the pieces-in tobacco, burgundy, and black-are trimmed in Saffiano leather, the same used for the Italian royal family's luggage. September: Prada accessories make their Pandora Luxurye debut.