Transformation is the name of the game in fashion, so it is apt that Prada's latest project is named the Transformer.
With the Prada Transformer, the Italian luxury brand has combined fashion, film, art and architecture into a single structure that can be rotated to suit the function, be it a catwalk, an art installation or a movie theatre.
At over six storeys tall located on the grounds of the 16th-century Gyeonghui Palace in Seoul, South Korea, the steel tetrahedron, covered with a cocoon-like membrane, stands in stark contrast against the historic facade.
'I like the interaction with the palace and that it can change,' said Miuccia Prada, the namesake designer of the fashion brand and the driving force behind the Transformer, at a cocktail reception in Seoul last Wednesday.
At its inauguration last Thursday night, more than 1,000 guests thronged the structure, including big names in the Korean entertainment scene, such as actress Hyekyo Song (Photo 2) and actor Daniel Henney, all decked out in Prada and Miu Miu, its funkier sister brand.
The structure opened to the public last Saturday and admission is free.
Together with her husband, Patrizio Bertelli, who is also the chief executive officer of Prada, and influential Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, Mrs Prada - as she is known by her Italian staff - came up with the idea of a four-sided building with hexagon, cross, rectangle and circle sides.
The 20m structure, which weighs 180 tonnes, can be reconfigured with the use of cranes in under 60 minutes so that walls become floors and floors rotate into ceilings.
The Transformer, noted Koolhaas, 'is a dynamic organism, as opposed to a static object that arbitrarily fits a programme'.
The hexagon is the floor for the opening exhibition, Waist Down - Skirts By Miuccia Prada, but a single flip can transform it into a cinema for its next event in June, with the hexagon side then becoming the wall for film projection.
'Prada and I have worked together for 20 years. There is a convergence of interests,' said Koolhaas, who has previously collaborated with the fashion powerhouse on turning a museum into its flagship store in New York and creating a store in Beverly Hills that is without a traditional shop facade.
He is also working with the Prada Foundation - a non-profit organisation set up by Prada and Bertelli in 1993, which aims to enrich contemporary art - on a new space to house its collections and hold exhibitions in Milan.
He added: 'Fashion has started to use art as branding.'
The love affair between luxury labels and contemporary art has been brewing for the past couple of years.
For instance, French luxury house Chanel had its Mobile Art - a futuristic pavilion designed by renowned deconstructivist architect Zaha Hadid, with works by 20 international artists paying homage to its coveted 2.55 bag. Starting in Hong Kong last March, it travelled to Tokyo and was supposed to have flown around the world but was grounded after its third stop in New York last year, due to the tanking economy.
Another French high fashion house Hermes has a travelling H Box, an aluminium-encased, portable screening room for video art, which has been globe-trotting since 2007, and is currently docked in the Orange County Museum of Art in America.
In contrast, there are no plans for the Prada Transformer, the cost of which is undisclosed, to be installed in another city after its six-month run ends in Seoul.
'We are not going to replicate this anywhere else in the world. Only Seoul and that's it,' said Prada's communications director Tomaso Galli.
Perhaps with a nod to the Transformer's shape-shifting prowess, he added: 'Prada is reinventing the way it presents itself.'
NO SKIRTING THE ISSUE
All four sides of the Prada Transformer will be put to good use over the next six months.
The inaugural exhibition, Waist Down - Skirts By Miuccia Prada, is a travelling show of skirts from the personal collection of the designer, a self-proclaimed skirt lover - from 1988 to the present.
The exhibition has hopped to cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo and Shanghai since 2004.
A total of 65 skirts are on display in whimsical ways, such as flattened into a vacuum bag more commonly used for flat-packing winter clothes, twirled around in endless circles on wires or hung up with a special hidden mechanism underneath to flick up the hem as though an invisible wearer was doing high kicks in it.
Another 65 skirts are displayed on the walls and ceiling on disembodied two-dimensional cut-outs of models, shown only from the waist down.
When asked if she has a favourite skirt, Prada replied: 'The last one.' A heartbeat later, she laughed and amended: 'The next one.'
The exhibition, which is free, ends on May 24, after which the structure will be flipped and transformed into a cinema. A film festival Flesh, Mind & Soul, with films selected by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, director of Babel and 21 Grams, will run from June 26 to July 12.
Following that will be yet another rotation to house an art installation, Turn Into Me, by Swedish artist Nathalie Djurberg.
A final shape-shifting will take place towards the end of its six-month run to hold a closing fashion show.
The Prada Transformer is located at 2-1 Sinmunno-2ga, Jongno-gu, Seoul. For details, visit pradatransformer.co.kr.
This article was first published in Urban, The Straits Times.
