The grand architectural experiment that is the Prada Epicenter on Rodeo Drive is exploring its potential as something more than a clothing store.
On Friday, "Waist Down: Skirts by Miuccia Prada," an exhibit of 100 of the Italian designer's skirts, went on display in the 24,000-square-foot technological marvel designed by Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren. With the addition of the unusual skirt exhibit, the store, built in 2004 as a conceptual merger of art, fashion and commerce, becomes a gallery space where one can ponder: Is a skirt art?
The exhibit, which ranges from Prada's first women's collection in 1988 to the present, was conceived and designed by the think-tank arm of Koolhaas' Office for Metropolitan Architecture to illustrate the ideas and craftsmanship of Prada's skirt designs.
Prada fans might have been happier with a display of purses, which in Prada's hands revolutionized the focus of luxury goods companies, status-conscious consumers and knockoff artists the world over. Skirts, however, were simply more interesting.
"There is a cultural context that you can play with," says Kayoko Ota, the exhibit curator from the think tank.
"Waist Down" also makes viewers consider how the body below the waist is a zone of political, social and artistic conflict. The precipitous ups and downs of hemlines over the 18 years of fashion presented here illustrate the skirt's role as a social barometer. As such an object of femininity, the skirt seduces, flirts and labels. Each of those qualities is cleverly illustrated, sometimes with an adapted windshield wiper.
Los Angeles is the fourth stop for "Waist Down," which has toured the Peace Hotel in Shanghai and the two other architecturally ambitious stores, also called epicenters, in Tokyo and New York. The curators were challenged by the unique layouts of each space, but Los Angeles provides perhaps the most intimate interaction with the items, which beg to be touched.
Much as Prada herself designs -- by distorting, by sensing a moment, by turning the ordinary into the extraordinary -- the exhibit changes the context of fashion from a commercial enterprise to something else. Whether that something is art may be a thread-thin distinction that will one day vanish. At the very least, these skirts make for interesting viewing.
