New Yorkers have a soft spot for the color black, and designers are happy to give us what we want. That’s why the normally colorful PRADA decided to go monochromatic to celebrate the brand’s 20th year on 5th Avenue. On Thursday, Prada will launch an all-black capsule collection called “Lights Out” which features 10 reimagined versions of its best-selling styles, including the Galleria tote, Cahier shoulder bag, and Elektra clutch. To differentiate from the original bags, the brand blacked out the gold logo and swapped in tonal zippers and dark hardware for a sleek, moody look.
Prices start at $2,490 for the most work-friendly tote and top out at $7,150 for an embellished, croc-trimmed, ladylike shoulder style. While the bags are a big purchase, if you’re in the market for a classic black power bag, you can’t go wrong with Prada. Scroll ahead to see them all.
Prada leather bag
Prada Cahier bag, $2,950 Photo: Courtesy of Prada
Prada Galleria bag, $2,990 Photo: Courtesy of Prada
Prada Elektra clutch, $7,500 Photo: Courtesy of Prada
Prada Elektra handbag, $7,150 Photo: Courtesy of Prada
Prada Monochrome bag, $2,650 Photo: Courtesy of Prada
Prada Lights Out capsule, available starting October 4th at 724 Fifth Ave.
In the classic short film “The Red Balloon,” a boy living in a colorless part of Paris befriends a bright red balloon, which follows him to school, waits by his door, provides the warm companionship that is otherwise absent from his life.
When the street photographer James Prochnik started taking pictures in Chinatown, he found echoes of the movie in the ubiquitous red shopping bags that filled the neighborhood. At the right hour, when the sun was low in the sky, the bags appeared lit from within, an array of Chinese lanterns glowing benevolently in the crowded streets.
In other neighborhoods, including Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, where Mr. Prochnik lives, shopping bags come in all colors — nothing to shoot there. But in Chinatown, where the red symbolizes good luck, red trumps all other shades. Some bags carried produce from street markets; some carried nothing but air, buoyed aloft on steamy updrafts.
Mr. Prochnik, 52, saw the bags as symbols of continuity and identity in a city where ethnic enclaves are everywhere threatened by gentrification. And the bags themselves are threatened by proposed legislation to ban them or impose surchargeson each bag.
“They’re a symbol of the resourcefulness and hardworking nature of the Chinese community in New York,” he said.
“I support the environmental concerns for banishing them, but it’ll be a loss.”
In the more recent movie “American Beauty,” a character videotapes a white plastic bag swirling in a winter breeze, and says, “This incredibly benevolent force wanted me to know that there was no reason to be afraid, ever.”
Mr. Prochnik found a similar message in the bags of Chinatown: that good luck can be summoned; that gentrification can be suspended; that Chinatown can remain Chinatown, even as the rest of the city transforms around it.
“The color almost manifests that belief in good luck, happiness and wealth,” he said. “They take on a magical quality.”
And after they have served their function of ferrying Chinese broccoli or cheap mangoes, Mr. Prochnik sometimes uses them to filter the light of his camera flash. Because good luck is something we should never squander or discard.
John Leland, a Metro reporter, joined The Times in 2000. His most recent book is “Happiness Is a Choice You Make: Lessons From a Year Among the Oldest Old,” based on a Times series. @johnleland
A mural by WhIsBe. Photo: Courtesy of Francesca Beltran/ Courtesy of Coach
As Coach designer Stuart Vevers continues to court millennials’ affection, the brand is also branching out into street art. Some of the most well-known street artists in New York have turned Coach’s signature “C” print into murals. The project, which spans New York’s five boroughs, includes work by Bisco Smith, Crash, DAIN, TriHumph, and WhIsBe. The interlocking Cs are turned into subversive touches on murals — like sanctioned Dapper Dan pieces.
This isn’t the first time fashion has merged with street art. GucciGhost graffitied the brand’s flagship store in New York in 2016 and just last month Sonia Rykiel turned the facade of their store into a collaborative mural that looked like a bookshelf, where passersby could add their favorite titles, or just draw over it. Coach’s rainbow of Cs is reminiscent of your favorite bags from 2005 — just reimagined for the Instagram age. See some of the murals below, along with a map of where to find each piece, in case you want to pose for the ‘gram.
By GIZ. Photo: Courtesy of Francesca Beltran/ Courtesy of Coach
By Thomas Allen. Photo: Courtesy of Francesca Beltran/ Courtesy of Coach
By SUCH + DAIN. Photo: Courtesy of Francesca Beltran/ Courtesy of Coach
By The Drif. Photo: Courtesy of Francesca Beltran/ Courtesy of Coach
A mural by WhIsBe. Photo: Courtesy of Francesca Beltran/ Courtesy of Coach
As Coach designer Stuart Vevers continues to court millennials’ affection, the brand is also branching out into street art. Some of the most well-known street artists in New York have turned Coach’s signature “C” print into murals. The project, which spans New York’s five boroughs, includes work by Bisco Smith, Crash, DAIN, TriHumph, and WhIsBe. The interlocking Cs are turned into subversive touches on murals — like sanctioned Dapper Dan pieces.
This isn’t the first time fashion has merged with street art. GucciGhost graffitied the brand’s flagship store in New York in 2016 and just last month Sonia Rykiel turned the facade of their store into a collaborative mural that looked like a bookshelf, where passersby could add their favorite titles, or just draw over it. Coach’s rainbow of Cs is reminiscent of your favorite bags from 2005 — just reimagined for the Instagram age. See some of the murals below, along with a map of where to find each piece, in case you want to pose for the ‘gram.
By GIZ. Photo: Courtesy of Francesca Beltran/ Courtesy of Coach
By Thomas Allen. Photo: Courtesy of Francesca Beltran/ Courtesy of Coach
By The Drif. Photo: Courtesy of Francesca Beltran/ Courtesy of Coach
Luxury travel goods manufacturer MCM finds a new Seoul in Berlin.
Everybody is speaking about millenials and Generation Z and it seems that they are responsible for the death of mainstream media with their very niche interests. At Achtung Mode we are highly specialized in fashion content only but more and more the luxury brands we work with have to execute crossover ideas often in conjunction with the art world to have reach. MCM is a leader when it comes to speaking to the fickle millennial audience. And here is why.
Oh boy, all the smart marketing moves they have to come up with to play favor with this audience. They are a shopaholic generation of travelers whose itineraries make those of diplomats pale in comparison and they only want the coolest. They are all over the place and all over the planet and know everything. But as every nomad, they like to belong to a tribe.
MCM is a leader when it comes to speaking to the fickle millennial audience.
If you want to have them buy your product and stay loyal you must make them believe in your roots and heritage and always keep them entertained. Sounds complicated, yes, and it is.
Still MCM, which is considered a hip brand with millenials, has taken a big step a few weeks ago. The brand was born in Munich and is doing well all over Asia for its German craftsmanship and savoir-faire reputation. But to stay on the edge, MCM, which is focusing on growth in Europe and Germany at the moment, has decided to declare Berlin as its new German creative hub with global influence. Munich is in the history books but Berlin and its Bauhaus tradition and now bourgeoning art and club scene is what makes the brand tick. Also, Made in Italy will start playing a bigger role for the brand.
To underline this new direction, MCM’s Sung-Joo Kim invited an eclectic group of international journalists and tastemakers to a few days in Berlin under the moniker Viva MCM, Viva Berlin. Events where kicked off at the Store at Soho House Berlin. The Store has slowly but surely established itself as one of Berlin’s best retail destinations next to the Corner and Andreas Murkudis and the Voo Store with its fine edit of top brands. Korean DJ Peggy Gou played and Berlin DJ trio Fjaak unveiled a USB pocket for MCM with tracks for traveling.
A new collaboration with Johann Koenig Souvenir and MCM which will premier at Art Basel Miami was unveiled.
MCM also organized a tasting menu at Tim Raue, Berlin’s best chef with Asian leanings and highlight was an evening at St. Agnes the Johann Koenig art gallery where Norbert Bisky explained his current exhibition to the audience. Needless to say, the space in the Brutalist church is amazing and other top artists like Anselm Reyle who shows in the same gallery attended. Also, a new collaboration with Johann Koenig Souvenir and MCM which will premier at Art Basel Miami was unveiled. On display was an exclusive preview of the KS x MCM collection of limited MCM editions curated by Koenig Souvenir, a label for unique objects of art founded by Johann Koenig and David Mallon: “For the Koenig Souvenir x MCM Travel Collection, we were inspired by the airport as a place of transition – not only for people, but also for art works traveling around the globe. We wanted a collection that recalls this modern way of travel and shipping, but also connects with art in its production process. The collection will be issued as a limited art edition of six travel items playing on the traditional MCM design,” says Mallon. The collaboration will launch at Art Basel Miami Beach this December.
So if you want to stay in with millennial, have roots, show them and make your branches grow.
According to Prada Men’s Wear Spring Summer 2018; the lonely, hollow ring accompanying the virtual noises ceaselessly sent into the ether, sounds without echoes: These were some of the unlikely themes linking a bunch of disparate designers here over the past week.
And — surprise! — philosophy and politics are of concern even to those who favor sling-back sneakers and satin for day.
Consider the case of Miuccia Prada, a designer whose sometimes banal efforts come dressed in big ideas. For her show on Sunday, she and her collaborators at Rem Koolhaas’s research and design studio, OMA, restructured and decorated the exhibition space at her headquarters with Ollie Schrauwen and James Jean’s large-scale illustration — rushing locomotives, giant ants from a ’50s horror movie, an ape beaming cosmic rays — inspired by graphic novels.
The stated theme was the urgency of narrative in the virtual age. “If storytelling is the root of all communication,” as the show notes said, “the manner in which we choose to tell them — abstract or complex or simple or direct — is significant.”
Ms. Prada’s métier dictates that hers is an image language. This is a challenge, since, in the stories she tells, translation is often required. There is a limit, of course, to how much one can read into a topcoat. That there were a number of these in herringbone, camel, bird’s eye tweed, in a show of summer men’s wear, was a tale all its own.
Perplexing in other ways were the trousers with high gathered paper-bag waists, vaguely emasculating short shorts, creepy Cliff Huxtable cardigans tucked into waistbands, fanny packs worn at the small of the back, shirts with popped collars reminiscent of Ming the Merciless. Blanche McCrary Boyd, a gifted novelist pal sometimes obliged, like most writers, to take on the occasional well-paying bit of journalism, used to joke of those pieces that they were “not for the collected works.”
You might say the same of Prada’s show on Sunday, were it not for the shirts and assorted garments ornamented with panels repeating the irresistible graphics drawn on the walls. Those were the collectibles, the surefire Prada moneymakers. In a certain sense, that’s all the story you need.
