Awardees of Prada-backed Experimental Design Lab Attend Brand Show in Milan
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PRADA PROGRAM: In April, the Dorchester Industries Experimental Design Lab with artist Theaster Gates and Prada Group revealed inaugural awardees for the three-year collaborative program shaped to support designers of color — across fashion, footwear, jewelry, culinary, visual and fine arts, as well as architecture and product design — and to amplify their work.
Gates and the awardees attended the Prada show on Sunday, clearly excited about the opportunity, posing together for photos to capture the moment.
“You know, the designers are between 25 and 53 so they are actually a broad cohort of professional designers and emerging designers, and it feels amazing to see them in the middle of one of the most important fashion moments of the year,” said Gates. “The first thing that seems to really matter is that Miuccia [Prada] believes in artists and she believes in great design.”
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He said that his friendship with the designer “made it really easy” to develop the project, close to his heart as it allows “other people to have the opportunity for great artistic and design opportunity the same way I have. Watching Prada step up to the plate of diversity has been one of the fulfilling things of the last several years.” He characterized the project as “life-changing,” for the designers, “closer to fulfilling their dreams.”
The 14 designers from around the world were handpicked “for their extraordinary creative potential” by Miuccia Prada and the late designer Virgil Abloh, before his premature death last November.
The designers will receive financial support to further develop existing endeavors or for new and innovative projects, as well as access to a kind of creative think tank designed to foster further creative development. The Lab — a partnership between the design and manufacturing arm of Theaster Gates Studio, Dorchester Industries, as well as art and neighborhood transformation platform Rebuild Foundation (also founded by Gates) and Prada — sits on Chicago’s South Side, and annual activations in New York City and Los Angeles will allow the design cohort to present their work to leading organizations.
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