Launched in 2019, Prada Re-Nylon – comprising accessories and ready-to-wear for men and women – epitomises a fundamental duality of Prada’s identity; innovation in spirit, responsibility in action. Placing sustainability at the heart of a fashion collection, Prada Re-Nylon has instigated a shift across the brand as a whole. Today, production of all Prada virgin nylon has been converted to regenerated nylon, a radical commitment to sustainability by a major luxury house.
Nylon is an emblem of the radicalism at the very heart of Prada’s design ethos. The brand’s signature material since the end of the Seventies, Miuccia Prada’s introduction of nylon through Prada’s accessories represented a re-set of contemporary notions of luxury – a pragmatic material reconsidered, used in a new context, elevated through design. Prada’s reinvention has cemented nylon as part of the modern cannon of luxury. Over four decades, Prada has continued to challenge convention in its use of nylon across accessories and ready-to-wear, a material connection to the thought-processes always at the heart of its DNA.
In the twenty-first century, notions of luxury have again shifted, embracing ideologies and environmental concerns – thinking luxury. Prada Re-Nylon is an evolution of this iconic fabric to ECONYL®, a regenerated nylon yarn that can be ceaselessly recycled to produce material of the same high quality.
Prada Re-Nylon is regenerated nylon created through the recycling and purification of plastic collected from the ocean – like fishing nets – and from the landfills, as well as textile fiber waste from all over the world. Through a complex process of depolymerization and re-polymerisation, Prada Re-Nylon yarn is produced through a circular approach.
This journey, in turn, inspires the 2024 Prada Re-Nylon Collection campaign which presents an offering of timeless and eternal pieces, worn by Watson and Cumberbatch. This new collection is literally framed by the environment it is actively preserving: the ocean.
As of July 2023, 1% of the proceeds from the Prada Re-Nylon Collection supports SEA BEYOND, the educational program launched in 2019 by Prada Group and UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC). A project in line with the Group’s passionate societal concerns and the value it has always afforded to education and culture, SEA BEYOND has raised global awareness on sustainability and ocean literacy principles, educating young generations around the world. To protect our ocean, we need to understand it – learn, think, act.