Not having any sense of irony seems to be in fashion over at Prada.
On Tuesday, thanks to one Twitter user, the internet began discussing a brand new Prada coat selling for $1700 and a shirt selling for $500. The coat and shirt feature famous lesbian political activist, icon, and professor Angela Davis saying “Right on!”
Angela Davis cotton T-shirt $500: pic.twitter.com/QAANJkvkst
— A.B.G. (@BBOYGREGORY) April 25, 2018
According to the shirt description, the shirt is part of head Prada designer Miuccia Prada’s “feminist sentiment” for the spring/summer 2018 collection.
“Style it with the house’s comic-illustration trench and wide-leg trousers for a stylish look that packs a powerful message,” the site reads.
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The description for the $1700 coat says that Davis was Prada’s “superhero.”
“She fit the designer’s concept of what a young, combative woman should be,” the description reads.
Several people called out the disconnect between the patrician prices of the gear versus Davis’s own anti-capitalist, pro-black work.
Angela Davis, the anti-capitalist, pro-black, vegan feminist.
Y’all think she would want ANYTHING to do with Prada? Tuh.
— المثيرة للفوضى (@PlantH0e) April 25, 2018
Angela Davis wouldn’t even approve of Prada’s existence, let alone a Prada t-shirt w/ her on it priced at $500.. people really turning whole revolutionaries & their lives to overpriced, fashionable aesthetics for the sake of profit. wild https://t.co/0eKH1zGIYr
— Rebeka (@bekalectus) April 25, 2018
I don’t see how anyone who’s read even a paragraph of Angela Davis’s work would be comfortable putting her likeness on a $1,700 Prada jacket.
Like…the fuck?
— Marq (@_hoemo) April 25, 2018
According to Snobette, the Angela Davis design featured on the shirts is drawn by Trina Robbins, the first woman to draw Wonder Woman for DC Comics.
Trina Robbins told Dazed, “It was lovely for (Mrs Prada) to use the Angela Davis one. In the original context, I had that made for the back cover of the very first all-female comic book, called It Ain’t Me Babe, (which) came out of Berkeley in 1970. The idea was you’d put this in your window to announce that if Angela Davis just happened to be passing by on the lam from the FBI she could knock on your door and you could give her refuge. Terribly romantic notion! I mean, I absolutely idolised Angela Davis. Running from the FBI, my God! She was such a comic-book character.”
If you do want to get some Angela Davis-laden swag, Blavity compiled a list of black-owned shops selling gear featuring the famous feminist thinker.
INTO reached out to Angela Davis to ask whether or not she approves of her image being used on Prada’s designs.
In the meantime, we can imagine she’d say something like
