Prada and Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas have been collaborating for a decade, and whilst the best-known fruits of the partnership are probably their innovative architectural excursions – think Seoul’s Transformer project and the Prada Epicenter in New York – those on the inside track have, for the past five years or so, been exposed to another side of the creative partnership.
Koolhaas, his Rotterdam-based design studio OMA and the AMO think tank, have, since 2004, collaborated with the Italian house on Prada's catwalk shows.
See our gallery of Prada catwalk show venues over the years, starting with the most recent above
Adapting the expansive interior space that is part of Milan’s Prada Fondazione in order to meet Koolhaas’s exacting design agenda, the shows are consistently groundbreaking - creating a benchmark in show design not found anywhere else in the industry.
Beginning back in 2004, the show collaborations kicked off with the men’s AW outing, featuring a relatively simple series of OMA designed wallpapers draped throughout the space. Recent years however have seen Koolhaas and his team at OMA turn the traditional runway concept on its head, in characteristically innovative style.
Earlier this week saw the presentation of Prada's SS 2010 collection in Milan. Designed to split the audience down two sides of an abstracted wall – which came punctuated by seven regularly spaced doors – the openings provided the audience with a fleeting glimpses of the models, whilst 12 projections emulating the interior spaces of grand dame hotels came splashed across the walls - creating a beguiling, through-the-looking-glass effect.
As such, in celebration of the past 10 years of collaborative bliss, we thought we would offer a peek at the best products of the OMA-meets-Prada partnership.
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