How Prada Defined Athleisure Before It Was Even A Thing

In 1984, Prada unveiled the now-legendary nylon backpack, a lightweight travel bag made from the same industrial-strength synthetics used for Italian army tents. It was priced like a luxury leather bag. It was marketed as a must-have accessory. It was a runaway hit. Reflecting on the bag in a 1990 interview for The New Yorker, Miuccia Prada told mused that she wanted “to mix the industrial way of doing things, with the patrimonio of the past, with the artisanal tradition.” This fascination soon found a home on the runway. By the mid-90s, Prada’s “wrong chic” collections grabbed attention through “the use of wrong materials,” notably “the use of nylon no longer just for bags.” Industrial nylon – that mass-produced plastic first used in stockings and parachutes — had not walked in high fashion collections before; its vulgarity, its utility, no matter how styled, was therefore wrong. Read more at Highsnobiety.