Italian fashion house Prada has unveiled a Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garment (LCVG) developed in partnership with Houston-based Axiom Space, designed to be worn by NASA astronauts inside their next-generation spacesuits. The garment was revealed on June 7, 2026 at Prada's Manhattan flagship store.
The body-hugging undersuit features ventilation tubes knitted directly into the fabric and will be worn inside the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU), the spacesuit being built for NASA's Artemis programme. It is expected to be used on the Artemis 3 Earth orbit mission targeted for 2027 and the Artemis 4 lunar landing anticipated in 2028.
How It Works
The LCVG circulates cooled water through tubes pressed against the astronaut's skin to prevent overheating during spacewalks that can last up to eight hours. A separate circuit supplies fresh oxygen and removes exhaled carbon dioxide. The garment was built using advanced 3D modelling and Prada's expertise in high-performance textiles and specialised knitting.
Jonathan Cirtain, President and CEO of Axiom Space, said the two companies produced something neither could have made alone. Lorenzo Bertelli, Prada's Chief Marketing Officer, described the collaboration as drawing on a broad spectrum of the house's capabilities and technical know-how.
Not the First Step
In October 2024, Prada and Axiom Space had already unveiled the outer-shell design of the AxEMU at the International Astronautical Congress in Milan. The LCVG is the next layer of that partnership — the garment worn directly against the astronaut's skin.
NASA awarded Axiom Space a $228 million contract to develop the Artemis-era spacesuits in 2022.
Why It Matters
Luxury brand strategist Thomai Serdari of NYU's Stern School of Business notes that Prada has moved beyond aesthetic borrowing from space into a genuine operational role. The commercial logic is clear: as space tourism grows, the consumers likely to travel to orbit are precisely those the luxury industry already serves on Earth. Being part of the hardware — not just the narrative — is a positioning no advertising spend can replicate.
The Artemis 4 mission aims to land the first woman and first person of colour on the Moon, over fifty years after Apollo 17. The suit they wear will carry a Prada label.
