Creative Comradery

For the first time, Italian maison Prada gives four design luminaries free creative reign to each conceive an item from the house’s iconic nylon fabric.

- Kames Narayanan

“I WANTED TO do something that was nearly impossible, make nylon luxurious. But obviously it made sense to people, because if you think about it now, black nylon is everywhere,” once said Miuccia Prada.

Ideas of subverting from the norm have long paved the Italian designer’s creative endeavors at the eponymous label she helms. Soon after taking the reigns at the luxury house started by her grandfather, Prada debuted what was set to become an integral slice of its history. The synthetic fibre, known for its industrial use in the Italian army, was woven into a nondescript black nylon backpack. In the early 1990s, the austere carryall rose to It bag status when the excess of the ’80s was sidelined by the grunge movement.

In the years that followed, Prada integrated the use of nylon from backpacks to ready-to-wear pieces. Her take on luxury, a subversion from the archetypal, has found a permanent place on the brand’s runways. Since the initial launch of the Prada black nylon backpack in the 1980s, nylon has found a permanent place at the house. The use of the technical fabric has in itself evolved with time as new yarns of nylon have been invented and re-invented. In some instances, approached like more precious cashmere or silk and in others, left untouched.

At the brand’s Fall/Winter ’18 menswear showcase at the outskirts of Milan, nylon made a comeback in a big way. The opening look, a padded shirt-vest hybrid, shorts and bucket hat in the same material, laid the template for the looks that followed. “I am in love with black nylon. I can’t have enough at the moment,” said Prada in a post-show interview with Vogue Runway. Throughout the history of the house, nylon has been dissected into a mutlifaceted fabric. This season was an investigation into its industrial tactility.