When, in 2001, in debt to the tune of $785 million, Prada plopped down $40 million for the former home of the Guggenheim SoHo and recruited starchitect-turned-architectural-elder-statesman Rem Koolhaas to design the interior, eyebrows were raised, brows furrowed. Was the company, which had thrice previously failed in efforts to go public, acting out of a delusional entitlement impulse or a canny sense of the value of consumer spectacle? Five years on, the verdict is that the store is a brilliant work of self-branding, but don't let that settle the question--see for yourself! In planning the interior, Koolhaas was trying to reinvent whole cloth the nature of the consumer experience, and the central feature of that strategy was to move all of the actual merchandise off the ground floor, greeting customers with an open, plaza-like space leading to an impressive interior elevator. (This has struck some not so much as a reinvention of the consumer experience as an imitation of the clock-tower-slash-elevator once at the heart of the toy store FAO Schwartz.) The Prada store was conceived as a mix of the commercial and the museum, so feel no guilt traipsing around without any intention of making it to the checkout line.