Pic Credit: Alamy Prada shop. Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. Milan, Italy
Prada is famed for luxurious handbags, Italian leather shoes, and high fashion runways, but now the premium fashion brand is adding spacesuits to its credentials.
The exclusive label has announced it will be working on NASA’s lunar spacesuits for the upcoming Artemis 3 mission, in 2025, which will see a woman and a person of colour on the moon for the first time.
The unusual collaboration between a luxury Italian fashion house and the American space agency has surprised fashion fans across the world – but the haute couture x spacesuit pairing may not be as random as we first imagined.
Prada’s innovative work ethos, along with decades of experience with experimentation in design, attracted Axiom Space, which provides space flight services, to approach the brand for help with the historic mission.
The fashion label stated the suit is going to “provide astronauts with advanced capabilities for space exploration while offering NASA commercially-developed human systems needed to access, live and work on and around the moon.
“The high element of technology and design going into this project is going to allow us to explore more of the lunar landscape than ever before. “
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The mission is the first of its kind since Apollo 17 in December 1972, so the space suits are due for an upgrade that will allow astronauts to prioritise comfort and movement. The suits will also be lighter and better suited to the female body, unlike previous designs.
Michael Suffredini, CEO of Axiom Space said: “Prada’s technical expertise with raw materials, manufacturing techniques, and innovative design concepts will bring advanced technologies instrumental in ensuring not only the comfort of astronauts on the lunar surface but also the much-needed human factors considerations absent from legacy spacesuits.”
It is not the first unlikely fashion collab. Others include:
Supreme x MTA Metro – Streetwear brand and the company that brought us the NY subways system made branded metro cards
Spam x Huf – Skate brand and the worlds weirdest meat form designed a clothing line
Ikea x Off White. – Our favourite home store joined high fashion brand in releasing a collection that featured rugs that look like Ikea reciepts
What do you think of the Prada-Nasa collaboration? Let us know @fashionnorth
