The Texas desert would probably be the last place you would expect to see a luxury fashion store, but a fake Prada store in the middle of nowhere has become a tourist hotspot.
Just outside the small town of Valentine in Texas, you will find a fully-stocked Prada store.
What’s even more interesting is that there are goods worth $80,000 in there.
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While the fake Prada store might not be the luxury brand’s official outlet, the merchandise inside it is completely real.
But why is it in such an odd place?
To put it simply, the ‘Prada Marfa’ is a ‘pop architectural land art project’ by Berlin-based artists.
They describe the art project as ‘a surrealist commentary on Western materialism.’
You will find a lot of oddities like this in strange places across the world, just like this out-of-place Volvo car parked in the middle of the lake.
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Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, the artists behind the fake Prada store, introduced the landmark in Texas in 2005.
Texas has quite a lot of intriguing attractions, from this fake Prada store to a Tesla gigafactory.
Unfortunately, only a few days after the store became popular, cases of theft and vandalism started making the headlines.
The artists came back to the store, repaired it, and increased the security.
They also switched a few pieces of merchandise to prevent people from stealing it.
For instance, all the shoes inside are right-footed, and the handbags have no bottoms.
That’s a pretty imaginative way of preventing theft, you have to admit.
Since then, the store has attracted attention from all over the world, including from celebrities like Beyonce.
It even appeared on an episode of the popular TV show ‘The Simpsons’ in 2019.
As Prada Marfa gained popularity over the past two decades, Prada itself included the store in their ‘Third Parties Projects’ list.
“We believe that the ideas behind the artwork survive and we hope that this will increase the interest in contemporary art and in the potential of art in general,” Dragset told the luxury brand.
The designers built the store with biodegradable materials, so it will slowly fade away with time.
