In its quest to shape the aesthetics of everything, the fashion world has extended its glossy, well-decorated tentacles into all sorts of unexpected areas: sports, film, hotels, furniture, publishing. And, as of recently, space. The cosmos is not just the final frontier, apparently.
It’s the final fashion frontier. Or so said Lorenzo Bertelli, the chief marketing officer of Prada, before the unveiling of its most recent collaboration: the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit spacesuit, otherwise known as the spacesuit that Nasa’s (National Aeronautics and Space Administration of the US) astronauts will wear when they walk on the moon during the Artemis III mission in 2026. “It is a revolution in the design of spacesuits,” said Russell Ralston, the executive vice president for extravehicular activity for Axiom Space, the company responsible for the suit.
It’s sort of like the Lamborghini of spacesuits: streamlined, motile, kind of sporty (relatively speaking). What it is not, however, is an obvious runway brand extension. The white suit – the final version of a prototype first teased last year when it had a dark covering to hide its outer layer – with articulated armadillo-like grey patches at the knees and elbows, a cropped top, selectively placed red stripes and glossy silver visor, has more in common, at least at first glance, with previous spacesuits than with anything seen on the Prada runway.
Even if the most recent Prada show did feature the sorts of face pr.
