In an industry still deeply in thrall to collaborations, Prada remains notoriously picky when it comes to working with other brands or designers. Yes, Miuccia Prada’s partnership with Raf Simons at the helm of the brand is technically a collaboration and the company produces a curated line of limited edition pieces with Adidas. But beyond that, Mrs. Prada practically refuses every collaboration proposal that lands on her desk. As she once told Vogue, “I have been asked to do collaborations for centuries! It always seemed to be about selling more, clichés, banality and not about ideas. It never interested me.”

So, when Miuccia Prada proposed to artist Cassius Atticus Hirst to do something together for Prada, Cass reacted as if it were a dream. “Of course, it didn’t seem real to me at all,” he recalls via Zoom from his studio in London. But she was serious, and today the 22-year-old can walk into any Prada flagship store in the world and find a pair of Prada America’s Cup sneakers with his name on them.

Cass does not consider himself an artist like his father, the legendary British artist Damien Hirst, even though he paints. He is more precisely a consummate Gen-Z creative who has dived into a wide range of projects and activities with passion, some of which involve art. When we spoke, I thought he was in an art studio until he turned the webcam to show me the professional recording studio equipment next to which he was sitting: this, I found out, was his music lab. The studio where he works on visual projects is located nearby, and with some free time coming up, he will head to Germany to finger-skate with friends, that activity usually done in school otherwise known as tech-decking. “You know when in the morning you’re waiting for your teacher to come in and you’re playing with the Tech Decks, well, I’m the guy that never stopped,” he says.

But it was another kind of teenage pastime that caught Mrs. Prada’s attention. Inspired by a seminar that Virgil Abloh did with Nike where participants could paint the Air Force 1s, Cass started buying white sneakers and spray-painting them with abstract, vibrant shades. He didn’t intend for it to become an independent art activity: he was just a kid with a lot of art materials at his disposal messing around. “It’s just fun for me. And being fun, ideas just keep coming. I don’t have any specific intentions from this work, just focusing on the shoe I have in my hand at that moment,” he says.

Cass grew up skateboarding and when we spoke he was wearing a Supreme t-shirt and a North Face cap. He’s savvy to the hype and when he started posting his custom shoes on Instagram, artists like A$AP Rocky and Playboi Carti reached out to buy them. However, Cass’s real breakthrough came when he showed one of his most ambitious designs to his father: an AF1 wrapped in duct tape and vinyl, which he then painted to create a structured, almost lunar color pattern. His father, like his son, is a sneaker enthusiast. “I was talking to my dad and he said, ‘You should try making them,’ in terms of producing a collection of his custom shoes. Being a teenager whose hobby project was just starting to look serious, Cass didn’t know where to begin. So Damien contacted a family friend who knows a thing or two about fashion production for advice. “[My father] was like, ‘Oh, maybe I’ll send a photo to Miuccia’.”

Miuccia was impressed: “She really liked it and said, ‘Let’s do something,'” Cass recalls.

After a trip to Prada’s production facilities in Tuscany, Cass’s art studio was filled to the ceiling with boxes of America’s Cup sneakers, the iconic design that Prada introduced in 1997 for the Luna Rossa sailing team members. His task was simple and generic: to create a collection of painted shoes. “The plan initially was to paint 3,000 pairs,” says Cass, an idea that only made sense considering he is the son of the most prolific mega-artist of our time. “I thought, ‘Yeah, just take the shoes and do it.’ I thought it would be fun. It would be a mess, but definitely a learning experience,” he says. In the end, he acknowledged that Prada would have “a much better system for doing it than mine.”

Instead, Cass painted over 80 pairs of sneakers to create four final models (in 22 colors) that showcase his eye for smooth, silky shades and subtle textural decorations. Being a fan of Prada’s nylon pieces – “There’s a sleeveless jacket with a hood, which I saw and thought, ‘Wow, it’s amazing'” – he was immediately drawn to the white canvas that is the pattern for the America’s Cup. “It’s a fantastic shoe, really. It was very fun to paint and it has a lot of beautiful shapes,” he says. Compared to the simple AF1, the America’s Cup required a more abstract approach: “The America’s Cup looks much more organic and I realized that by working on it. I realized I could be much freer.” It took a good part of the year before Cass felt ready to send the final designs to Milan. “It was nerve-racking, for sure,” he says.

So, did he ask for feedback from dad while working on the sneakers? “He’s a good figure to have around,” says Cass. “If something is crap, he’s likely to tell you.” But his most important focus group were his London skater friends, a group with a strong sense of coolness, and likely the ones who will be lining up to buy the Cass x Prada shoes. “Every time my friends came to the studio I would simply say, ‘Which one is your favorite?’ And if one stood out in particular, or if one wasn’t mentioned by anyone, I took it into consideration,” says Cass.

Cass, who says he practically grew up in the minimalist galleries of London, sees his father as a source of inspiration. “Of course, he’s rather dark and I think I resemble him a bit,” he says. Even more importantly, however, is the way Damien encouraged Cass to follow his passions wherever they may lead: “He doesn’t care what I do. He doesn’t want me to be an artist. If I’m skateboarding, it’s the same as art. I think he can always see the relationship between everything,” he says.

Now that the sneakers are available, Cass can’t wait to get back to finger-boarding. And the collaboration with Prada no longer seems like a dream. “It’s becoming real now,” he says. “It’s like, ‘ok, the whole world will see them, for real’.”