For its recent Milan Fashion Week offering, Prada took inspiration from the aquatic, sending a smack of jellyfish dresses floating down its SS24 runway. But now, always keen to keep us on our toes, Mrs P and Raf Simons are turning their attention away from the ocean, and looking firmly towards the skies.
The Italian house has just announced that it’s teaming up with space wear developer Axiom Space to design NASA’s next-gen lunar spacesuit. The suits will be used for NASA’s Artemis III mission, which is set to head to the moon in 2025 (the first lunar landing since Apollo 17 in 1972). It also looks like Prada is set to make history on the trip, as the Artemis mission will be the first time that a woman astronaut has headed to the moon.
In a joint statement with Axiom, the company have said that “the Axiom Space spacesuits are created to provide increased flexibility [and] greater protection to withstand the harsh environment,” so sounds like they’ll be a perfect fit for next season’s fashion week. The company was also keen to point out that they do in fact have the technical chops to complete the mission. Group marketing director Lorenzo Bertelli went on to say that it’s Prada’s “decades of experimentation, cutting-edge, technology and design know-how” that makes the house perfect for the job, and singled out the brand’s 1990s line Linea Rossa as an example of their technical prowess.
While we’re sure that Miuccia and Raf will put their own spin on the futuristic garments, fashion’s flirtation with space-age aesthetics has storied history. André Courrèges and Pierre Cardin were both heavily inspired by space in the 60s and 70s, and were even invited for their own personal tours of NASA. Cardin was actually the first civilian to ever put on a spacesuit, after (allegedly) bribing one of the security guards to give him access to Neil Armstrong’s suit. More recently, Yohji Yamamoto’s adidas Y-3 brand was tasked with designing space wear for Virgin Galactic in 2016, creating a workwear-inspired, sleek navy flight suit for Richard Branson’s commercial rockets.
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