If you're a designer, ending up on Diet Prada is a momentary kiss of death. The anonymous Instagram account made a name for itself with its biting wit, historical commentary about fashion, and more importantly, its call-outs against designers who knowingly rip off their contemporaries' collections. The duo behind the account — Tony Liu and Lindsey Schuyler — stayed clear of the media spotlight until now, giving their first public interview with Business of Fashion, spanning from the genesis of the account, the future of Diet Prada, and more.
The duo met at an entry-level designer job a few years back where their daily duties included researching old runway footage to pull inspiration for their designer boss. “We would look at runway shows, just kind of shooting the shit, and we would do these live roasts back and forth sitting in opposite corners,” says Liu. “One of us would pull up a show and say, ‘Hey, look at this, it’s so Louis Vuitton Fall 2014…’ We would just shoot comments back and forth. We kind of started it as a joke.”
While Diet Prada still has its original air of playfulness, the duo have been keen on igniting a sense of accountability in the fashion world that extends beyond lifting design ideas — the account has been vocal on a range of topics, spanning from photographer Terry Ricardson's predatory behavior to Alessandro Michele's Michele’s Gucci Autumn/Winter 2018 runway and its heavy use of Sikh turbans.
Liu and Schuyler discussed the future of Diet Prada, and how revealing their identities would help in their quest to legitimize the account as an authority voice, and potentially as a business in the coming future. “The time was going to come that we’d need to own it, eventually,” Schuyler says. Find the full interview over at Business of Fashion.
Thumbnail image via Diet Prada's Instagram.