Norbert Schoerner - PRADA ARCHIVE 1998–2002

Norbert Schoerner PRADA ARCHIVE 1998–2002 is back in its third edition. A formal exercise in making a book as true to Schoerner’s seminal campaigns as his photographs were to the DNA of the Prada brand. Art directed and designed by Jonny Lu Studio with a unique fold / hole punched format, Angela Lindvall’s face on the cover, the absence of text... form and function become inseparable. It is the book of Norbert Schoerner’s Prada. Its presence explains itself.

Norbert Schoerner is German. He moved to London in 1988. Throughout his career as an artist, his photography and film constantly sought to establish a new set of rules, unique to his own way of thinking. Working in fashion, he is the most rigorous and aesthetically principled of all practitioners. He met his match in Prada.

Tri-fold page. The original art direction of the campaigns by David James. The new design by Jonny Lu. The curious perfection of the ring binder holes throughout the book. A book seeking further function. To be used again, as these images have been.

A new aesthetic indeed. The most notorious dirty hands in the fashion millennium.

“Working with Prada takes a long time. It was very fragmented. Work in progress. We
weren’t working from a script. We were re-writing the script all the time. Formulating the concept every day. The work proceeds with failures, and reacts to changes. It’s very much an empirical process. And that’s the luxury of these campaigns. Other brands didn’t give you the time to do that...” - Norbert Schoerner

IDEA is a London based publisher and book store. The company has now released 100 titles including books by Willy Vanderperre, Collier Schorr, Harley Weir and Alasdair McLellan. IDEA has also published two sold out editions of Glen Luchford’s Prada 96-98, the direct precursor to this new book.

“In these four years, Prada was so dominant, the very definition of designer fashion. The cut and the materials completely defined the time. Without actually being futuristic or space age, Prada and Prada Sport somehow made the present so good that no one thought the future could ever get any better! Norbert’s campaigns are built on that – they are hyperreal but still real. And, arguably, our own world is further away now from the image he created.” - David Owen, IDEA

Published by IDEA
Designed by Jonny Lu Studio
ISBN 978-1-7395918-4-7

Softback with gatefold covers
4 punched holes through the whole book
29.7 x 22 cm
178 pages
Third edition of 1500 copies

© IDEA