As Prada partners with NASA, a look at the best space-inspired runway looks

Editor’s Note: This story has been changed from a previous iteration published around the time of the 2024 total solar eclipse.

“We have chosen to go to the Moon,” said President John F. Kennedy in 1962, and we have not stopped choosing to go to the Moon since America’s first lunar landing. Now Prada is going there through a collaborative project with NASA.

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

The looks put together here, almost all from the catwalk, are not intended to be hidden, but rather to make the wearer as memorable as a burning comet. There are voluminous moonwalker puffers, sure, but also streamlined, body-hugging one-pieces, and flowing robes worthy of Princess Leia, plus Dunedraping style and unmissable fluorescence. Technology is represented in the form of computer chip prints and embroidery, and the sun, moon, stars and planets are constantly rotating in terms of patterns. Designers like Nicolas Ghesquière, Alexander McQueen and Iris van Herpen have made many repeated trips of imagination to the new blue frontier and returned with suggestions for our well-dressed future. Feel free to explore.

Jennifer Turcios contributed additional image research to this story.

Anrealage, ready-to-wear fall 2022

Photo: Courtesy of Anrealage

Balenciaga, ready-to-wear fall 2021

Photo: Courtesy of Balenciaga

Balenciaga, ready-to-wear fall 2021

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Kiara Kabukuru, right, in a 3D print developed by Stephen Sprouse from images 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, ready-to-wear fall 2018

Photo: Courtesy of Moncler 5 Craig Green

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

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: Márcio Madeira

Alexander McQueen, ready-to-wear fall 2003

Photo: Márcio Madeira

Féraud, haute couture spring 2002

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

threeASFOUR, haute couture fall 2023

Photo: Courtesy of Threeasfour

Chalayan, ready-to-wear fall 2007

Photo: Márcio Madeira