ROME (AP) — The Prada Group announced a deal Thursday to buy crosstown Milan fashion rival Versace from the U.S. luxury group Capri Holdings under terms that values one of the most recognizable names in Italian fashion at 1.25 billion euros ($1.4 billion).

The deal will put Versace, known for sexy silhouettes and bold Greco and Medusa motifs, under the same roof as Prada’s “ugly chic” aesthetic and the youth-driven Miu Miu whose stunning growth in recent years has far outpaced the market. Prada said the 47-year-old Versace brand offered “significant untapped growth potential.’’

“This is exactly the strength for our group. There are no overlaps in terms of creativity, in terms of customer,″ said Lorenzo Bertelli, Prada’s chief marketing officer, who is being groomed to one day take over the business that his parents — Miuccia Prada, the group’s creative force and largest shareholder, and Patrizio Bertelli, its chairman and executive director — have turned into a global fashion juggernaut.

“We are buying a brand with huge potential, with a very recognizable aesthetic,” Lorenzo Bertelli said, underlining that the Versace brand name recognition, putting it among the top 10 in the world, far outweighs its business performance.

The final value of the deal will be adjusted at closing, which is expected in the second half of the year, the Prada Group said. It will be funded by 1.5 billion euros in new debt and has been approved by the Prada and Capri Holdings board of directors.

Prada Chief Executive Andrea Guerra said the deal was aimed at building a “sustainable revenue growth” and boosting the brand’s identity, and was not about squeezing synergies. Prada’s statement underlined that Versace will “maintain its creative DNA and cultural authenticity, ” while benefitting from its “industrial capabilities, retail execution and operations expertise. ”

There are no plans to change the CEO and Miuccia Prada will not be involved in the creative side of Versace, the executives said. Guerra added that the recent creative shakeup at Versace, with Miu Miu head of design Dario Vitale replacing Donatella Versace as creative director effective April 1, had nothing to do with the deal. He called it “an independent, very personal” decision by Vitale.

Lorenzo Bertelli said the experience of Miu Miu’s growth had shown that small changes can make all the difference. ”We don’t need to change the brand, revolutionize it. We need to just evolve it, make the right things happen, and all together they are hopefully going to bring a huge spark and bring back Versace to be a huge success,” he said.

Capri Holdings, which owns Michael Kors and Jimmy Choo, paid $2 billion for Versace in 2018, but had been struggling to position Versace’s bold profile in the recent era of “quiet luxury.″

Versace represented 20% of Capri Holdings 2024 revenue of 5.2 billion euros. An analyst presentation for the Prada deal said that Versace would represent 13% of the Prada Group’s pro-forma revenues, with Miu Miu coming in at 22% and Prada at 64%. The Prada Group, which also includes Church’s footwear, reported a 17% boost in revenues to 5.4 billion euros last year.

Donatella Versace, who took over as creative director at the fashion house founded by her brother, Gianni Versace, after his 1997 murder, continues with the fashion house in the new role of chief brand ambassador.

“I am absolutely delighted to become part of the Prada family,” she wrote in a post on Instagram beneath a photograph of herself and Miuccia Prada. ”I am honored to have the brand in the hands of such a trusted Italian family business, and I am ready to support this new era for the brand in any way I can.”

The Italian government welcomed a deal that appears to secure Versace’s longer term future as other family-owned fashion brands have faltered or even disappeared after opening up to outside investors.

“An historic ‘Made in Italy’ brand is Italian again,” Industry Minister Adolfo Urso said.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — An Alabama teen who narrowly survived a fierce shark attack last year said she hopes a proposed alert system before state lawmakers can help keep others safe in the water.

Lulu Gribbin, now 16, was one of three people bitten by a shark on June 7, 2024, during a string of attacks off the Florida Panhandle. She lost her left hand and a portion of her leg. On Wednesday, she asked Alabama lawmakers to support a proposed shark attack alert system.

The bill by Republican Rep. David Faulkner would establish an alert system, similar to the Amber Alert system, that would issue a notice to the public when there’s been an unprovoked shark attack in the vicinity.

“Ninety minutes before me, there was another shark attack a couple miles down the coast,” Gribbin said. Had she known about that attack, she and her friend would not have ventured into the water that day, she said. “This bill will help prevent future attacks and accidents.”

The Alabama House Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee advanced the bill Wednesday. It now moves to the full Alabama House of Representatives. The first of it’s kind system

Gribbin and her friend had been diving for sand dollars before the attack. They were riding the waves back to the beach when her friend screamed, “shark!”

“I saw a big shadow, but we all just started swimming for our lives,” She recalled. She said she tried to remain calm, remembering that sharks were supposed to be attracted to frantic motion. Then the shark attacked her and her friend.

“My hand was bitten first. I remember just lifting it out of the water, and I was stunned because there was no hand there. I couldn’t feel it because of all the shock I was in. Then the shark latched onto my leg,” she recalled.

A man she describes as a hero ran to pull her from the water. She blacked out and came to on the shore where a doctor and other medical workers, who were on the beach that day, rushed to save her. “I remember being focused just to keep my eyes open and to breathe, to just be able to make it to the hospital,” she said.

Her lengthy recovery has been documented on social media. As she visited the Alabama Statehouse, people frequently stopped to ask for photographs and to tell her that her story has been an inspiration.

While sharks are commonly found in the waters off Alabama and Florida, shark attacks are rare, said Gavin Naylor, director of the Florida Museum of Natural History’s shark research program. He said there are between 50 and 90 unprovoked bites around the world each year. And a trio of bites in a single day in close proximity is extremely rare, he said.

He said, generally speaking, the data shows that one shark bite does not increase the likelihood of another happening soon. However, Naylor said weather conditions that day likely brought an abundance of small fish closer to shore.

“The bait fish were very close into shore along that same beach and sharks were following them. But on any day in Alabama, you can see 20 or 30 bull sharks 400 meters offshore, but they just don’t interact with the public because they are much farther away,” Naylor said.

Naylor noted that rip currents kill far more people than sharks each year. Four people were killed worldwide in shark attacks last year. The U.S. Lifesaving Association estimated there are about 100 deaths each year in the U.S. from rip currents.

While the proposal would only impact the Alabama coast, Faulkner hopes other states will pursue similar systems or that federal legislation would expand its use.

“There had been a shark attack just down the beach, and yet she had no notice. And I felt like in this day and age, that’s something we shouldn’t let happen,” Faulkner said.

The bill, which would name the alert system for Gribbin, was changed to issue an alert only when an unprovoked attack occurred off the coast.

An earlier version would have allowed an alert for an “imminent danger” from sharks. There were concerns from beach communities that language was too vague and could lead to an excessive alerts, causing panic and potentially hurting the tourism industry.

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey on Wednesday urged lawmakers to approve the legislation, saying it will be an “added tool” to keep people safe, calling the teen “an inspiration and an awesome example of courage.”

MOSCOW (AP) — NASA astronaut Jonny Kim and two Russian crewmates arrived at the International Space Station on Tuesday on board a Russian spacecraft.

A Soyuz booster rocket lifted off as scheduled from the Russia-leased Baikonur launch facility in Kazakhstan to put the Soyuz MS-27 carrying the trio in orbit. They docked at the station just over three hours later.

Kim and Russia’s Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky are scheduled to spend about eight months at the space outpost.

NASA said Kim will conduct scientific investigations and technology demonstrations to help prepare the crew for future space missions and provide benefits to people on Earth. A native of Los Angeles, Kim is a U.S. Navy lieutenant commander and dual-designated naval aviator and flight surgeon.

Kim, Ryzhikov and Zubritsky are joining NASA astronauts Don Pettit, Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s astronaut Takuya Onishi and Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner and Kirill Peskov on the space outpost.