As Prada Pairs With NASA, a Look at the Best Space-Inspired Looks From the Runway

Editor’s Note: This story has been amended from an earlier iteration published at the time of the 2024 total solar eclipse.

“We choose to go to the Moon,” said President John F. Kennedy in 1962, and we haven’t stopped opting in since America’s first lunar landing. Now Prada is headed there via a collaborative project with NASA.

Designers’ fascination )or should that be fashination?) with the great beyond dates to the mid-’60s when Pierre Cardin, André Courrèges, and Paco Rabanne, created out-of-this-world get-ups for starry-eyed earthlings. Their silver-and-white Space Age aesthetic set the template for futurism in fashion. White, as the BBC reports, actually has functionality for astronauts; it reflects radiation and allows for “visibility even in the darkness of Earth’s shadow.”

The looks assembled here, almost all from runways, are not intended to be hidden, but to make the wearer as memorable as a blazing comet. There are voluminous moon-walker puffers, to be sure, but also body-con and aerodynamic one-pieces, and flowing robes worth of Princess Leia, plus Dune-style draping and not-to-be-missed fluorescence. Technology is represented in the form of computer-chip prints and embroideries, and the sun, moon, stars, and planets are in constant rotation pattern-wise. Designers including Nicolas Ghesquière, Alexander McQueen, and Iris van Herpen, have made many repeat journeys of imagination into the new, blue frontier, and returned with suggestions for our well-dressed future selves. Feel free to explore.

Jennifer Turcios contributed additional image research for this story.

Balenciaga, fall 2021 ready-to-wear

Phoot: Courtesy of Balenciaga

Balenciaga, fall 2021 ready-to-wear

Photo: Courtesy of Balenciaga

Kiara Kabukuru, right, in a 3-D print developed by Stephen Sprouse from imagery provided by NASA, for fall 1999.

Photo: Thomas Iannaccone for WWD / Getty Images

Stephen Sprouse, fall 1999 ready-to-wear

Photo: Thomas Iannaccone for WWD / Getty Images

Moncler 5 Craig Green, fall 2018 ready-to-wear

Photo: Courtesy of Moncler 5 Craig Green

Moncler 5 Craig Green, fall 2018 ready-to-wear

Photo: Courtesy of Moncler 5 Craig Green

Jil Sander, fall 2023 ready-to-wear

Photo: Alessandro Lucioni / Gorunway.com

Chanel, fall 2017 ready-to-wear

Photo: Kim WestonArnold / Indigi

Chanel, fall 2017 ready-to-wear

Photo: Yannis Vlamos / Indigital

Balmain, fall 2021 ready-to-wear

Photo: Courtesy of Balmain

Chalayan, fall 2017 ready-to-wear

Photo: Marcio Madeira

Alexander McQueen, fall 2003 ready-to-wear

Photo: Marcio Madeira

Féraud, spring 2002 couture

Photo: Antoine de Parseval / Shoot Digital for Style.com

threeASFOUR, fall 2023 couture

Photo: Courtesy of Threeasfour

Chalayan, fall 2007 ready-to-wear

Photo: Marcio Madeira