Four distinguished designers reinvent Prada’s Black Nylon trademark

Prada has teamed up with four distinguished designers and architects for its A/W 2018 collection to help shift the brand’s focus “to the industrial side of the multi-faceted Prada identity,” the Prada Group have announced. Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec, Konstantin Grcic, Herzog & de Meuron and Rem Koolhas have each worked on one item of the collection using Prada’s iconic Black Nylon fabric. The new designs were unveiled during the seasonal show, which took place in the Prada Warehouse.

Miuccia Prada first used nylon in 1984 to create a line of bags, purses and backpacks at a time where luxury brands would only consider the fabric suitable for packaging. Drawing on past Prada collaborations, Miuccia invited Herzog & de Meuron who had worked on the brand’s Aoyama boutique in Tokyo in the early noughties, while Rem Koolhaas designed the Foundazione Prada in 2015 and has been working on the brand’s catwalk set designs for over a decade.

To explain the inspiration behind the new collection, Vogue Runway reported that Miuccia said: “we are living in a period which is interesting because we do not know where we are going. So many people say that beauty will save the world, but I don’t believe so. The world will be saved by intelligence and humanity and generosity – and possibly love. But of course, the aesthetic world helps, a little."