When you speak of cities that are bastions of style and fashion, a small city in West Texas would never come to mind. New York, London and Paris are the first cities one would mention and while all of them have their own Prada stores or an array of them, one store in West Texas may get more attention than all of them.

Marfa, Texas is a small, desolate farming town in West Texas. In between Ciudad Juarez and San Antonio, Marfa is a town you usually pass through when driving Interstate 10. But amidst the farms and the edifices that make it look like a Norman Rockwell painting, Marfa has established a small art community.

Much like Georgia O’Keefe’s desert experience where she made her name painting desert flowers, Marfa has become a place where minds of art world meet for inspiration and relaxation. On the road to and from the city is a piece of installation artwork created Danish-Norwegian artist duo Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset in 2005.

It is a fake Prada store literally in the middle of nowhere. You would normally find a Prada store at a posh shopping mall or high-rent district. Yet these artists decided to erect a Prada store on a highway miles from nowhere. It’s not a real Prada store where you can purchase a handbag from a salesperson. It’s an art piece that has the merchandise that one can only view.

For the past eight years, the fake Prada received adoration as well as the ire of the residents of Marfa. Yet it still stands on US 90 until recently, when the Texas Board of Transportation gave the art piece a second look. Another artist decided to erect a Playboy-sponsored art piece that feature a giant iron Playboy bunny logo.

The Texas Board of Transportation declared that the art pieces were illegal because they bore logos. And to advertise would mean that the artists or the patrons would have to receive a permit. No ruling has come down yet but the campaign to save the fake Prada has begun.

From a website to a Facebook page, “Save the Marfa Prada” has become a cry from the community and fans of the art piece to keep it as it is. It has become a rest stop for travelers, an ideal spot for photographers and a symbol of the avant-garde art community that Marfa has become.

A lot of Marfa and the art world agree with the artists who created Prada Marfa, “We think it would be a shame for the local community if it disappeared after being there for so long since the work clearly is one of the strong points for the cultural tourism, which is such an important financial factor in this region.” The world of high fashion hit the roads of West Texas in a quirky manner and many don’t want to see it go.

Image credit: Paul Lowry on Flickr