PRADA UNVEILS ITS ‘IMAGE OF AN IMAGE’ CAMPAIGN

editor MAREK BARTEK

Prada has never treated a campaign as a simple exercise in image-making. After all, Ms Prada and Mr Simons are the intellectual duo of the fashion industry. For Spring/Summer 2026, the House goes one step further, questioning not only what a fashion campaign shows, but how we look at it, hold it, and desire it.

images courtesy of PRADA

Titled Image of an Image, the campaign revisits the collections by Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons through an unexpected lens. American artist Anne Collier, long known for interrogating photography, was invited to rethink the campaign format itself. The result is not a traditional series of glossy images, but still lifes that frame fashion as a physical, almost intimate object.

In Collier’s compositions, photographs of the collection — shot separately by Oliver Hadlee Pearch — are held in the air by visible hands (in the Prada gloves, of course). The gesture feels deliberate, and transforms these images from abstract advertisements into tangible objects, meant to be touched and examined. The viewer becomes aware of their own role in the act of looking.

The cast of the campaign spans film, music, and fashion, including actors Hunter Schafer, Carey Mulligan, and Nicholas Hoult, alongside musician John Glacier and model Liu Wen — all familiar faces seen through multiple filters of mediation, which adds another layer of the observation.

At its core, the campaign reflects Prada’s ongoing dialogue with contemporary art and culture. It is both a celebration of fashion imagery and a liberation from it, offering distance, objectivity, and reflection. In the age of endless scrolling, Prada wants us to slow down, look again and question why we look at all.