Prada Unveils Short Films for Galleria Bag

Prada is feting its signature Galleria bag with “The Postman Dreams,” a series of five short movies directed by Autumn de Wilde. Three of the films were released on thepostmandres.prada.com on Tuesday. Infused with surreal, ironic and sophisticated atmospheres, the short movies, featuring a soundtrack by Los Angeles-based nouveau-gypsy band The Blasting Company, are all linked but can be viewed in any order. “The Prada world that I built is a dreamscape of childhood desires mixed with adult fantasies,” said de Wilde. “The best part of fashion is the childlike obsession with beauty, it retains an innocence, and that’s what makes me feel inspired.” “The Postman” begins the series with a postman who falls asleep at work and starts dreaming about people and situations. This character also appears in “The Makeout,” where a Prada bag becomes a symbol of the desire between a young couple, as well as in “The Battlefield,” where a child, Filippo, is seen playing with the objects in his mother’s Galleria tote, its artisanal internal details unveiled through close-ups. To be released later this month, “The Three” and “The Laundromat” will feature a biker and a pin-up as protagonists, respectively.

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Weekly Sales Growth Decelerates

Retail sales gained ground on both a year-on-year and sequential basis last week, but the gains were diminished when adjusted for the earlier timing of Easter. The Retail Economist-Goldman Sachs Weekly Chain Store Sales Index concluded the week ended April 4 at 585.6, 1.1 percent above the prior week and 2.5 percent above the comparable seven days in 2014. In the prior week, the year-on-year growth rate was 2.9 percent and the sequential advance was 3.4 percent. “The earlier Easter this year – on April 5 versus April 20, 2014 – combined with the third warmest comparable week in the nation in more than 24 years, according to Weather Trends International, helped to propel sales on an unadjusted basis,” said Michael Niemira, principal and chief economist of The Retail Economist. “Adjusting for the Easter impact – which is the way the TRE-GS weekly [index] is reported, sales showed a moderate gain to finish the fiscal month.” Wholesale clubs, office supply stores, electronics stores and non-apparel specialty stores registered “substantial” gains for the week, while more moderate improvement came from drug, discount, dollar and online-only stores. Weather Trends International noted that, despite the generally warmer weather trends, “the Northeast, as usual, bore the brunt of the

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