Collaboration between architecture and fashion is possible, once again, thanks to the Prada Invited initiative, through which architects like Herzog & de Meuron and Rem Koolhaas have redesigned the iconic Black Nylon of PRADA during the presentation of its autumn/winter 2018 collection in Milan. The architectural view, also present in the industrial space where the show took place.

The backpack, as we know it, is an obsolete and uncomfortable object. Rem Koolhaas speaks of the rhythm of life of current society and its need for storing and transporting belongings. He proposes to move it to the front and make its compartments smaller, adjusting them to the real sizes of everyday objects.

An ode to language as a tool of persuasions and sincere communication. Words are joined to create vacuous discourses with no space for criticism nor reply. A mere pattern of the Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron applies like texture on a black nylon shirt.

The German industrial designer Konstantin Grcic returns to the origins of nylon and to the element it best responds to: water. Conceived as a material for making bags, it is now put forward, with its technical properties improved, for use as a fishing vest, in abstract designs with lines that adapt well to the body.

The brothers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec focused on the aesthetic aspect of nylon. Ronan says that he has always liked people – architects, painters, and students – who go around with art portfolios; the movement of this rectangle, its clean cut and fixed geometry in contrast with bodies in motion.