The new crew selected for NASA’s Artemis III mission will be entering Earth’s orbit in a new kind of style. Literally: They’ll be wearing Prada.
Or so it was revealed on Sunday morning, just days before the announcement of the Artemis III team, when the Italian brand hosted a different kind of launch at its store in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan. In partnership with Axiom Space, Prada unveiled its new-look Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garment (or L.C.V.G.), which NASA astronauts will wear under their Extravehicular Mobility Unit spacesuit (or AxEMU), also from Axiom x Prada, during their lunar missions and when they eventually walk on the moon.
It was 10:30 a.m., but black-clad waiters circulated with glasses of champagne as well as green juice in the Rem Koolhaas-designed space. A stage had been erected amid the shelves of thousand-dollar leather handbags and dresses, the better to showcase the sleek bodysuit.
“It’s very aesthetically pleasing,” observed Jonathan Cirtain, Axiom Space’s chief executive, during the suit’s presentation (which started a fashionable half-hour late) — words not normally associated with space clothing. The L.C.V.G. is the second phase of the Italian fashion brand’s collaboration with Axiom Space, a partnership that began in 2023 and has also produced the EMU. A stretchy, gray onesie made from a proprietary combination of yarns that includes titanium, the L.C.V.G. has stirrup pants and black tubes extending from the shoulders to curve over the arms, hug the waist and frame the outer thigh. Built-in tunnels — through which otherwise invisible tubes will be threaded to carry water to cool the body — swirl throughout the knit like anatomical topography.
As a result, unlike the L.C.V.G.s that came before (and that Lorenzo Bertelli, Prada’s chief marketing officer and head of sustainability, likened to “very comfortable, supernice pajamas”), this iteration looks less like a version of astronaut long underwear with some tubes stuck on and more like a new unitard from the Marvel costume department. Introducing … Astroman!
The L.C.V.G. is the latest in what is turning out to be a trend in contemporary space fashion, combining technological advances and safety specifications with a certain aesthetic choice: one that borrows more from the world of contemporary superheroes than NASA, and that has to do with the industry’s desire to capture the public imagination — which has, in turn, inspired Axiom’s collaboration with fashion.
As Cirtain said during the presentation: “Prada leads the world in development of luxury items. Why would you choose to do it on your own when you could work with the best?”
Well, perhaps because most people would not consider a spacesuit — or even the “inner layer of a next-gen lunar spacesuit” — a luxury product. Or even a fashion product. But that is part of what Prada is hoping to change by working with Axiom, and what Axiom is hoping to change by working with Prada, as the presentation, with its style-centric surroundings, made clear. In the end, it suggested this could be in everyone’s interest.
That’s because, Cirtain argued, “space exploration is not only about new boundaries, but it’s for the benefit of all mankind.” In clothing terms, that means “a lot of the things that Prada has developed will one day have positive human benefit for people that never go to space, whether that’s a luxury good or a new safety measure, flame retardant materials, all of those kinds of things,” he said.
Besides, Prada doesn’t just bring design know-how to the table, but a certain scalable manufacturing capability. That matters, Cirtain said, “if we want to move to a world where there’s thousands and millions of people flying in space.”
Thousands and millions, that is, “with different body sizes, shapes,” he said. All of whom are going to not just need, but want, something cool to wear.
