NASA to wear Prada as luxury group pushes into – Business News
Italian fashion home Prada on Sunday unveiled the inner-layer garment set to be worn by NASA astronauts heading into space, underscoring the model’s push to be the primary main luxury participant to make inroads within the space industry.
The body-hugging go well with, created in collaboration with Houston-based space infrastructure developer Axiom Space, options air flow tubes knitted into the garment.
“We have really a broad spectrum of capability and know-how,” Lorenzo Bertelli, Prada’s chief advertising and marketing officer, mentioned at an occasion at Prada’s Manhattan store, sitting beside a model donning the new Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garment.
Axiom Space Senior Vice President Russell Ralson (second from left), CEO Jonathan Cirtain (second from proper), and Prada Chief Marketing Officer Lorenzo Bertelli (far proper) unveil the Italian fashion home’s internal clothes for NASA astronauts. REUTERS
Expertise for developing space exploration merchandise “can come from lots of seemingly unrelated industries,” mentioned Jonathan Cirtain, CEO of Axiom Space.
The new product follows Prada’s splashy foray into space fashion in 2024 with the revealing of a spacesuit that’s anticipated to be used for NASA’s Artemis 3 Earth orbit, set to launch in 2027, and the anticipated Artemis 4 moon touchdown in 2028.
Luxury manufacturers have long drawn inspiration from space journey. But Prada has gone “beyond inspiration into an actual partnership” as the space exploration and tourism industries develop, mentioned Thomai Serdari, a luxury model strategist and advertising and marketing professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business.
Serdari pointed to two components motivating Prada’s curiosity within the space industry: to gain entry to prosperous customers who’re considering space journey, and to align the model with avant-garde thought. Companies from Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin to Elon Musk’s SpaceX have leaned into space tourism for the rich.
Prada’s push into the space section comes towards a backdrop of a struggling luxury items sector. REUTERS
The resumption of space exploration and human journey to the moon is “bound to attract a lot of eyeballs,” mentioned Luca Solca, international head of luxury items at Bernstein. Luxury manufacturers need to keep related and visual, he mentioned.
Prada’s push comes towards a backdrop of a struggling luxury items sector. After two years of contraction, the industry was exhibiting indicators of stabilization till the Iran battle started on the finish of February, disrupting journey and denting luxury spending far past the Middle East.
Other fashion and attire corporations have jumped on the space bandwagon. Under Armour has partnered with spaceflight company Virgin Galactic to create space attire, whereas Columbia Sportswear has labored with space exploration company Intuitive Machines on space cloth technology.
The new go well with from Prada follows its foray into space fashion in 2024 with the revealing of a spacesuit to be used for NASA’s Artemis 3 Earth orbit, set to launch in 2027, and the anticipated Artemis 4 moon touchdown in 2028. REUTERS
But it stays unclear whether or not different luxury gamers would possibly observe Prada’s lead.
“In luxury, it is important to be the first to do something, to be a trend-setter,” Serdari mentioned, noting that LVMH’s Louis Vuitton, Hermès, and Chanel are all concerned about space journey however that they’d possible discover new methods to make inroads.
“You will never see the upper crust of the luxury sector copying each other,” she added.
