Things settled down temporarily when Prantera enrolled at the prestigious Central Saint Martins. "People were raving, and high fashion was irrelevant — but you could see the seeds of Alexander McQueen and Hussein Chalayan," she says. The shadow of the grand Italian houses she'd grown up under was receding. Prantera says it was less about big brands, and more about music. "Only with magazines like Dazed & Confused did it become relevant again."

From the beginning, Prantera's connection to Acid House — and London, more widely — was seminal in her work. Traces of the scene's aesthetic can still be found in her and Purcell's designs: giant smiley faces, glow-in-the-dark cartoons, splatters of iridescent rainbow paint. However, up close, the cut and finish of the garments render the final products more high-end and refined. "For me, it was always going to be difficult to reconcile that high-low fashion balance," Prantera explained. "I decided I would incorporate my love of graphics and skatewear with my appreciation for designer fashion via my methods and processes: The production costs have to be high, and you have to work with really great manufacturers; otherwise it folds into itself."

High-fashion and streetwear may be highly visible in the industry now, but these two movements first coalesced in the early '90s, due to the explosion of youth culture — and Prantera happened to stand at the collision point, due to her connection to both worlds. Now, she says one of her tricks is her choice of fabrics — picking more ordinary materials, like jersey and denim, and rendering them in more sophisticated fabrications. "What we do is not mass produced — I'm mathematical with my cutting. I think that’s my being Italian; we don't do 'sportswear.'"