![]() (That emporium initially specialized in oggetti di lusso-“luxury objects”-that, in keeping with the taste of the times, included glass from Bohemia and jade from the Far East, but ultimately became known for its high quality luggage, fit for Italy’s royal family). Prada was born to a bourgeois Milanese family-her father’s company made lawn mowers for putting greens her quietly elegant mother inherited the celebrated luxury leather goods company founded by her own grandfather, Mario Prada, in 1913 in Milan’s soaring Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II shopping arcade. His mother was a cleaning lady, his father a night watchman in the Belgian army, but his education in taste began with his inspiring aunts who lived in flat-roofed villas with Verner Panton and Eero Saarinen furniture that gave their nephew a lifelong passion for midcentury aesthetics-it’s one that Miuccia Prada shares. Simons was born in the town of Neerpelt in rural Belgium, “a village between cows and sheep” as he once told Vogue. “What matters for me is ideas, and the aesthetics are totally secondary,” Prada has declared, but those aesthetics have changed the way men and women have wanted to present themselves in the last three decades, and in Simons she has found an accomplished collaborator-Flemish cool to her Italian warmth, pragmatist to her gut-feeling fantasist-to challenge and inspire. The move is also a vote of confidence in the power of the creative imagination at a time when the bottom line dominates much of an industry obsessed with exponential growth and number crunching. And so today’s announcement that Raf Simons-innovative menswear designer, alum of Jil Sander, Christian Dior, and Calvin Klein-would be joining Prada as co-creative director, with the two famously opinionated personalities working together to reimagine the brand for the 2020s, seems like a masterstroke of innovative thinking. Since we moved to Escolta, its history and heritage have been part of 98B’s backdrop.“When I was a girl,” Miuccia Prada confided to Vogue’s Sarah Mower in 2004, “I always wanted to be different, and before the others.” It is a desire that has guided Prada’s life at the creative helm of a multibillion-dollar global brand, one shaped by her protean talents and instincts and by her ability to reimagine what the future of fashion might look like. Significant businesses, fashionable items and imported merchandise were sourced in the street during that period. It is less than a kilometer in length but it is replete of magnificent post-colonial architecture designed by highly respected Filipino architects. It was the commercial hub of Manila during the early 1900s and was a witness to many “firsts” in the country: first ice cream parlor, first movie house, first electric tram among others. ![]() The area itself is considered as a business heritage district. The elegant six story art deco building was built in 1928 and designed by Andres Luna de San Pedro (son of Juan Luna, a world-renowned Filipino painter during the late 1800s). We are currently located at the mezzanine floor of the First United Building (formerly known as the Perez-Samanillo Building which is along Escolta Street in the heart of old Manila and a stone-throw away from the world’s oldest Chinatown. We are stimulated with ideas, projects and explorations that ask pertinent questions, stretch boundaries. We want to provide a platform where artists can engage meaningfully with the local community, and to give the general public a non-intimidating access to art and creativity -different from when it’s presented inside the confines of the white cube format.Īs such, we present art in multiple layers and perspectives to a broad and diverse audience while contributing to the contemporary art scene. We're a multi-disciplinary art laboratory that seeks to establish a convergence with artists, designers, curators, writers, musicians, film makers, activists, educators, researchers, cultural workers, performers, architects and students together with the general public. We're an independent, not-for-profit, artist-run space and initiative based in Escolta, Manila.ĩ8B COLLABoratory is a platform for critical discourse, experimentation, exchange, information and presentation of contemporary art in the Philippines. ![]()
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