PRADA’S WOMEN: The “Prada Invites” project is female.
The fashion house has invited three creative women — Cini Boeri, Elizabeth Diller and Kazuyo Sejima — to each reinterpret the label’s signature nylon material. The five designs, developed by the celebrated architects, will be unveiled on Thursday at the brand’s show, held once again at the Fondazione Prada’s Torre venue.
The Prada spring 2019 show invitation also celebrated the project and came in the form of a portfolio featuring booklets dedicated to each of the three designers and their styles for the brand. Boeri created a messenger style bag with removable and adjustable modules. In the booklet, Boeri states, “In the way I work, the image derives from function, and so many design work starts precisely from this.”
Both Diller and Sejima created two pieces each. The former reinterpreted the nylon garment bag with utilitarian zippers and buckles allowing its metamorphosis into a raincoat and also a yoke style bag, which was transformed into a lighter item for women to carry “sketchpads, sandwiches and lipstick.” Sejima playfully created two bags called the ‘Long bag’ and the ‘Curved bag,’ turning multipocket travel bags usually hanging on the wall and a neck pillow, respectively, into carry-on styles.
Italian architect and designer Boeri has collaborated with the likes of Giò Ponti and Marco Zanuso before setting her own studio in Milan in 1963 and working with interior design companies, such as Knoll and Arflex. A member of the Time’s most influential people list in 2018, Polish architect Diller moved to New York in the Sixties where she cofounded the Diller Scofidio + Renfro design studio. Diller is spearheading the expansion’s works at the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art and The Shed arena, both in New York. Tokyo-based architect Sejima marked a goal in 2010 when she was the first woman to be named curator of the Venice Biennale of Architecture; Sejima counts the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, in Kanazawa and the non-profit center Grace Farms in New Canaan, Ct.
The notion of “Prada Invites” encompasses an examination of the intersectionality of design, exploring unexpected conversations between different disciplines, the company said.
This marks the second iteration of the “Prada Invites” project, which was first unveiled last January with renowned designers and architects Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec, Konstantin Grcic, Herzog & de Meuron and Rem Koolhaas.