There I am, on the side of a two-lane highway in rural West Texas — sweaty, dirty, hair in a bun. I can smell my feet, and I’m standing up. Yet, improbably, I’m looking into the windows of a Prada store.
It’s a small, square building with awnings that bear the Prada name. Inside, the fine handbags and shoes the Italian fashion label is famous for are neatly displayed.
But this roadside boutique isn’t really a boutique at all — it’s an art installation completed in 2005 by Scandinavian artists Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset. It’s called “Prada Marfa” — even though it’s not quite in Marfa, Texas, but 35 miles down the road in Valentine.
I first learned about Prada Marfa through the images of Allison V. Smith, a Texas-based photographer who documented Marfa before it was cool to document Marfa. I fell in love with her perfect square photos, especially the one of the stucco and adobe structure on the side of the road.
As we drove along Highway 90, I knew the installation was nearby, but I didn’t know exactly where. This allowed me to experience Prada Marfa as I assume its creators intended — snapping my head around as we drove past at 80 miles per hour, then turning the car around to take a closer look.
The artsy town of Marfa is one of the destinations I’ve most wanted to see, and (much to Scott’s grumbling dismay), I rushed us through the Guadalupe Mountains to get to it.
Prada Marfa obviously doesn’t belong in this flat landscape of pastures, train tracks and tumble weeds. The building’s windows are large, the awnings are crisp, and lights illuminate the designer goods after nightfall. The artists who created this bizarre installation plan to let it slowly disintegrate into the natural landscape. Barring a twister, the building could stand for a millennium, outlasting even Prada itself. (In case you’re wondering, Prada Marfa has not escaped vandals. Three days after its completion thieves made off with 14 right-footed shoes and six handbags. The graffiti has since been painted over and the store “restocked.”)
In my current life as a road tripper, I have no need for high heels or luxury fashions. I think about the $750 price tag for a pair of Prada shoes, and I calculate that it equates to two week’s worth of accommodations, meals and gas. There are no designer shoes back in my closet in Phoenix, either, and I only know one person who actually owns Pradas. But that’s not to say I wouldn’t love a pair — they’re beautiful.
Once, while picking through the cluttered shoe aisles at Nordstrom’s Last Chance, I actually got to touch a pair of Pradas. They were black pumps, precariously resting at the top of the size 7 rack. I think I may have gasped. I tried them on and took a few steps, admiring the shoes’ beauty below the frayed hem of my Gap jeans. They were marked down to $295 from $900. I put them back on the rack.
I’m not one of those people who scoffs at the extravagancies of high fashion. I respect it. In my most recent job, I photographed fashion. I drew inspiration from the incredibly stylish women I worked with, all of whom treated their ensembles like works of art. To me, that’s what high fashion is — art. That’s why I think Prada Marfa so smart.
Preserved inside this little stucco building on a straight-as-an-arrow highway in West Texas, these gorgeous goods are more apt to be admired than coveted. There are no price tags, no shoppers, no trappings of materialism. The doors don’t open — for anybody. You can’t pick up a pair of heels and say, “I would never pay that for a pair of shoes,” and you can’t judge someone who would. These Pradas are still out of reach — but they’re out of reach the way a Michelangelo painting is out of reach. The concept of “buying power” has been rendered powerless.
I’ll never attain Prada shoes, but at least I finally have a photograph of Prada Marfa. My photo is not as good as Allison V. Smith’s, but it’s a memory and a feeling and a piece of art all rolled into one, and those are the things I really covet.
—Jill