In 2006, LG and Prada came together to create the worlds first capacitive touchscreen phone. The KE850.

The front of the phone featured a 3-inch touchscreen display, with two call buttons, a back button. In typical prada fashion, the phone only came in black - with chrome accents & a signature prada logo at the top. The phone featured a 2MP camera with an LED flash and the capability to record 240p videos at 15 fps - which believe it or not was the same as the first iPhone when it released. The collaboration represents a time when technology and fashion had become one - and popular fashion houses were competing to release new and exciting products.

The phone was presented at the 2006 IF Design Awards, winning the award and then releasing in May of the following year. It’s main competitor, Apples iPhone, wasn’t unveiled until a month after which caused mass controversy as some people believed the iPhone to be a copy of the KE850s design.

Although the iPhone had gone on to destroy it’s competitors due to far superior performance, features and user interface, the LG Prada phone will always have a place in history.

It represents a time when technology and fashion had begun to excel and become more accessible to the masses, so it was inevitable for the 2 to join together.

This collaborative effort had sparked several other fashion houses to enter the tech market, either joining forces with tech giants or creating their own devices, none of which outperformed the LG Prada (and definitely not the iPhone). Prada went further than just lending their brand name to a pre-existing product. The fashion house wanted it to be a technological advancement and had a hand in the design, giving the phone a monochromatic theme with chrome accents to reflect the ‘Prada experience’ (coupled with a luxury Prada leather phone case and a very high retail price). The technology in this device may well be outdated now but it’s an important piece of history for technology and fashion, once again showing Prada’s forward-thinking design process, even outside of fashion.