Pradasphere II, a traveling public exhibition tracing the history and culture of Prada from its origins in 1913 to the present day, opened at the Start Museum in Shanghai, China in December 2023. Drawing on the typology of the magazzino, the exhibition design evokes a contemporary warehouse of content and stories with more than 400 artifacts—physical and digital—on display, drawn from the fashion archive as well as decades-long engagements across art, architecture, culture, and sport.
A successor to the Pradasphere exhibition staged at Harrods in London in 2014, and again in Hong Kong the following year, Pradasphere II is designed to depict Prada through accumulation, close looking, and hospitality. Diverse elements reveal the themes and ideas core to Prada: some explore deep craft and skilled making, others reveal the manifold aesthetic contradictions at the heart of the brand, while others explore Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’s ongoing quest to challenge traditional notions of luxury. Sharing new perspectives on 110 years of history, the exhibition grants unparalleled, firsthand access into Prada’s past, present, and future.
