How Prada’s Nylon Backpack Rewrote the Rules of Luxury
When Miuccia Prada introduced her now-famous nylon backpack in 1984, the gesture was, if not confrontational, then certainly contrarian. At a time when luxury was bound up in conspicuous consumption, she offered something deliberately plain. Her company enjoyed a reputation for supplying Milan’s elite with finely made leather travel goods, and a backpack, of all things, made from industrial nylon and sold at a hefty price, ran counter to almost every prevailing instinct. Nylon was the fabric of tents and parachutes—light, durable, and sturdy, but also impersonal, even austere. That was precisely what appealed to Prada, who had taken over the family business in 1978.
“I hated all the bags that were around…so formal, so traditional,” she has said. “Suddenly, nylon started to look more intriguing to me than couture fabrics.” Early on, customers accustomed to the reassuring heft of leather needed persuading. Editors, on the other hand, recognized the shift almost immediately—so much so that the scene outside Prada’s shows began to resemble particularly avant-garde school drop-offs. By the mid-’90s, the idea had fully taken hold. Prada’s collections began to fold nylon into the broader wardrobe, and the backpack settled into the house’s vocabulary.
The Re-Nylon backpack, a quiet reprise of the original, arrives just as the appeal of unfussy fashion has come back into focus. Prada’s original design was effortlessly pared back: a soft, collapsible body secured with a drawstring, covered by a flap, and worn high and close to the back. The new iteration is almost identical to its predecessor; the one notable adjustment is a second loop for attaching accessories, a small concession to how we carry things now. What has really changed, however, is the material itself. While the original nylon came from a military supplier, its successor, Re-Nylon, is made through the breaking down and reforming of waste recovered from the ocean, such as discarded fishing nets, and textiles from landfills. One percent of sales proceeds supports Sea Beyond, Prada’s ocean advocacy program, which was developed in partnership with UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission.
Giving back to the environment makes sense. Long before backpacks entered fashion, they belonged in the great outdoors; their modern shape was informed by mountaineering in the early 20th century, when rucksacks were adapted to better distribute weight across the body. That sense of practical purpose was integral to Prada’s original vision, which is why the backpack’s reappearance feels less like nostalgia than a continuation of intent. Nylon allowed Prada to strip a bag back to its essentials and, in doing so, suggest a different way of thinking about refinement; now she has found an ecologically conscious way of furthering that mission. And if there’s anyone who knows that refusing the codes of status is a very effective way of rewriting them, it’s her.
Clockwise from top left: KEYSTONE-FRANCE/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images; Galen Rowell/Corbis via Getty Images; Courtesy of Prada; Moment/Getty Images. Center image: Courtesy of Prada.
