Dive Brief:
- Prada will be dressing the China women’s national soccer team in travel and formal event clothing through a partnership that began last week and is expected to continue in 2024, the Italian fashion house announced in a release sent to Fashion Dive.
- The 23-member team, nicknamed the Steel Roses, wore an official Prada uniform featuring black jackets and trousers, button-down white shirts, and black loafers as they left for Adelaide, Australia, to play in the FIFA Women’s World Cup, held in Australia and New Zealand beginning July 20.
- The news comes after Prada saw net revenues top 1 billion euro ($1.16 billion) for the first quarter of 2023, due in part to a growth in China.
Dive Insight:
Designer soccer collaborations are big news ahead of this year’s FIFA World Cup, and this new relationship with China's popular women’s soccer team marks a savvy play in a growing market.
But this isn’t a new goal for the family-run company. In May, Prada released its first collaboration with Adidas, which offered three new soccer cleats for men and women. Adidas has faced some pushback this year after Puma and Nike, its biggest competitors in the soccer space, formally announced they would be banning the use of kangaroo leathers in their shoes, leaving Adidas as the sole large-scale purveyor of kangaroo leather cleats.
Prada’s previous work with Chinese athletes includes a 2022 partnership ahead of that year’s Beijing Olympic Winter Games. At that time, it worked with Chinese athletes Gong Lijiao, Li Zhixuan, Xiong Dunhan and Yang Shuyu to customize several pieces from its spring-summer 2022 collection, according to the release. In addition, Prada produced a video for the athletes with creative direction by Hung Huang, the influential Chinese-American CEO of the China Interactive Media Group, which publishes fashion magazine iLook.
Earlier this year, the Lyst Index, which monitors the popularity of fashion brands and products based on shopping behavior and product searches, named Prada to the top spot in its Q1 2023 rankings, with its sister brand Miu Miu nabbing the No. 2 spot.
In December, Prada saw its founder Miuccia Prada and her husband Patrizio Bertelli announce plans to step back as co-CEOs of Prada Group, with their son Lorenzo Bertelli expected to take over as group CEO.
