When NASA returns humans to the Moon at the end of 2027 - for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972 - the astronauts will walk in spacesuits signed by Prada. The Milanese fashion house, in collaboration with Axiom Space, is designing the suit for the Artemis 3 mission, on which a woman will set foot on the lunar surface for the first time.

The spacesuit is called AxEMU (Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit) and it's no fashion gimmick: it has to withstand extreme temperature swings at the Moon's south pole and allow walks of up to eight hours. Prada's signature shows in the vivid red lines reminiscent of their Linea Rossa technical collection. „A bridge between top engineering and appealing aesthetics," as Lorenzo Bertelli, the group's marketing director and Miuccia Prada's son, describes the collaboration.

The real innovation, revealed this month, is invisible from the outside: a liquid cooling and ventilation garment - a sophisticated underlayer with tubes circulating cold water over the main muscle zones, so the body doesn't overheat while working in a pressurized suit. The system also has backup cooling loops - in space „a backup plan" isn't a phrase, it's a condition for survival. The suit has already passed successful tests in NASA's underwater simulations.

Fashion and space already know each other: Under Armour sewed for Virgin Galactic, Columbia for Intuitive Machines, and Monse's designers dressed a Blue Origin mission last year. But Prada on the Moon is another league - and a reminder that the Italian house has always loved technology: some twenty years ago it launched a touchscreen phone a month before the first iPhone.

There remains the question every skeptic asks: does a spacesuit really need a fashion house? The engineers' answer is that it doesn't - but it doesn't get in the way either. And for the brand, the photograph of the first woman on the Moon in a suit with a red line is an advertisement money can't buy. Everyone will look at it. Forever.