The store is bitchin'. A disneyland for fashion hounds and design fans. Huge swells of wood, moving archival-library style shelving, oversized pixelated images within crisp curvilinear silhouettes, a giant crow's nest elevator, stadium seating where mannequins, tired shoppers and $20K worth of shoes sit side by side.

Pictures would describe it alot better, but those wide open vistas of the top floor and even the smaller spaces of the lower level offered little shelter from the all-the-more-intimidating-for-it Prada clad security force. The hired bulk introduced us to two Prada facts: no pics allowed and surprisingly, collar sizes go up to at least 26-27.





inside dressing room

the rooms are glass faced - you can see right in -- on the floor inside though, there are two rubber hemisperes, one opens and closes the automatic sliding door, the other "clouds" the transparent glass for privacy. (Liquid Crystals get a charge and go opaque)

one entire wall of the dressing room is a mirror. a few square feet of the mirror are non-reflective, displaying instead a time delayed (2 or 3 second) b/w video feed of the dressee. you can turn your back to the mirror, spin around and have plenty of time to see that your butt looks big in a size 4 dress. not that this man was doing that.





"hmmm, lets see... one bowl of Klingon Gruu-tahkkk and one early-21st century Earth costume."

on the wall facing the mirror each room has what appears to be a replicator station from the starship Enterprise, only more futuristic looking. the system is actually a screen/physical interface to the prada catalog and store inventory. Place the items you will be trying on within the closet or on the shelf and the screen will detail their materials, manufacturing processes, sizes available, compliments and alternatives.





very beautiful interface, the minimal aesthetic and pragmatic look of the type and visual elements extending the store's overall future/art/tech retail experience to the AV collateral. the touch screen was a little quirky though, and the interface very cryptic. and wether intentional or not, the difficult nature of the interface maintains the distance between the user and the brand's high-art exclusiveness.
and above all, one thing becomes vert clear when viewing the prada items rendered on-screen: there is quite obviously a relationship between the Prada and Segway organizations -- a relationship as in "We'll loan you our staff illustrator for that NYC project, you deck-out our models for the "IT" patent application shoot."






outside dressing room

Brand extension via physical interface controlled multimedia foci was exemplary, folding conceptual and virtual spaces into those of the commonly known space-time retail fabric.

They really made an effort to mix AV stuff in with the product. There was a video projector piece that was really nice. A motion detector allowed you to navigate with your hand, zooming in and out of a world map that, in turn, was representing population, religion, prada distribution, internet traffic, store location, etc. It was cool.





There were some non-interactive screens displaying cool esoteric, lifestyle image and motion stuff hung among the clothes. Also, in a small alcove downstairs, some 20 or so gallery-style mini LCD monitors displayed video footage (live maybe?) of the factory floors, with raw materials beginning their journey to product at the hands of uniformed, well groomed ladies.





Above mentioned Lifestyle imagery.