When Prada first partnered with Axiom Space in 2024, the reaction was part disbelief, part intrigue. A luxury fashion house building spacesuits? Two years on, the collaboration has moved from the suit's exterior shell to something far more intimate: the layer worn closest to an astronaut's skin.
Unveiled at Prada's Manhattan store on 7 June, the Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garment, or LCVG, is the latest milestone in a partnership that now spans the full architecture of the AxEMU lunar spacesuit. Where the 2024 reveal focused on the white outer shell designed to withstand the Moon's extreme temperatures and micrometeoroid conditions, this new chapter turns inward, addressing the challenge of keeping a human body cool and breathing during up to eight hours of continuous physical exertion in a vacuum.
The garment circulates cold water through a network of flexible tubes positioned across the body's major muscle groups, absorbing metabolic heat and transferring it to the suit's portable life-support system, which then expels it into space. Unlike legacy NASA cooling garments, which relied on a single set of tubes, the Axiom-Prada LCVG features a fully redundant cooling circuit, meaning a failure in the primary loop does not end the mission.
A separate ventilation loop continuously delivers fresh oxygen across the astronaut's face while washing away exhaled carbon dioxide, routing it back through a CO2 scrubber before recirculation. The result is a garment that functions as both thermal management system and respiratory aid, hidden beneath layers of protective shell.
Prada's contribution goes beyond aesthetics. The house applied decades of expertise in engineered knitwear and advanced textile construction, using 3D modelling techniques to develop a garment that maintains performance while remaining lightweight and comfortable for extended wear. Specialised fibres were selected to withstand repeated use across long-duration missions, translating knowledge typically reserved for luxury apparel into a system designed for extraterrestrial survival.
The collaboration marks a genuine crossover between industries. "By bringing together the best in both aerospace engineering as well as luxury craftsmanship and advanced product development, we have developed a garment that neither company could have created independently," said Dr Jonathan Cirtain, Axiom Space CEO and President. Prada Group Chief Marketing Officer Lorenzo Bertelli called it "a new achievement born from the unique combination of Axiom Space's pioneering expertise and Prada's know-how in design, patternmaking and advanced materials."
Beyond NASA's Artemis IV mission, scheduled for early 2028, Axiom Space has confirmed the suit is being marketed to commercial operators including Blue Origin and SpaceX. In other words, the next time a private citizen boards a orbital flight, the garment keeping them comfortable might well bear a Prada label.
