Here’s Why the Prada Backpack Is the Greatest Travel It Bag of All Time
Photo: Hans Feurer.
Today, Prada will stage its stand-alone Cruise show at the Fondazione Prada’s Osservatorio in Milan. While most major labels like Chanel, Dior, and Louis Vuitton have adopted the “go big or go home” motto when it comes to showing Resort collections, the Italian house helmed by Miuccia Prada has shied away from the holiday-inspired season, recently including a small amount of it within the Spring men’s lineup, shown in June. That’s not to say that Mrs. Prada is turned off by travel. In fact, Prada was a leather goods and luggage company first, and much of the designer’s work borrows from the idea of wandering, like the “vagabond” women who walked in her Fall 2016 show or the Spring 2017 menswear collection full of backpack-strapped lads on a mission to, well, anywhere. The backpack, of course, is itself an iconic symbol for Prada. It represents the designer’s nomadic, exploratory sensibilities but also her understanding of the importance of utility in fashion.
When Prada released its original nylon backpack in 1984, people went nuts. It was a money-making hit that no one saw coming—an impressive amount of hype for a plain black nylon sack. Decorated only with that iconic triangular logo, the backpack made label lovers rethink their Hermès bags and quilted Chanel double Cs. As Mrs. Prada told The New Yorker in a 1990 interview: “I want always to mix the industrial way of doing things, with the patrimonio of the past, with the artisanal tradition.” Who knew that a backpack could go so deep?
Today, the Prada backpack is as prized a possession as it was back in the late ’80s and early ’90s. This writer happily still has hers: a large two-pocket Vela in black that can go from home to the gym to the office to a plane ride far away. It’s the most comforting thing in my closet. I use it almost every single day and I’d like to think that Mrs. Prada would be proud. It’s a little bit of everything: simple, durable, useful, fashionable, sophisticated, covetable. It’s a travel bag by definition, but a style totem in spirit. The enduringly cool Prada backpack taught me what fashion-meets-function actually means and, in turn, just how “It” a bag can be.
This story originally appeared on Vogue.
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