Urban Beaches
Review of Prada “Days of Summer” Ad Campaign by Creative Director Ferdinando Verderi and Photographer David Sims with models Bella Hadid, Damson Idris, Louis Partridge, and Liu Wen
Prada’s Days of Summer campaign understands that the house is often most persuasive when it stages contradiction with total composure. A beach on a rooftop should feel absurd. Under Prada, it feels inevitable. That is the particular skill of the house, taking collisions that ought to jar and arranging them so precisely that they begin to read as a new kind of normal.
This is what makes the campaign effective. Summer here is not sold as escape, nor as some distant fantasy of leisure. It is brought into the city and made to live alongside architecture, tailoring, and the mechanics of metropolitan life. The concept expands Prada’s long-standing fascination with juxtaposition, where swimwear meets structure, relaxation meets rigor, and the familiar is sharpened by displacement. In that sense, the campaign feels deeply aligned with the house’s DNA. It is not simply giving us a seasonal mood. It is giving us a Prada condition.
That idea also lends the imagery a quiet intellectual charge. Rooftop sand becomes more than a set device. It suggests suspension, interruption, the desire to carve out pleasure inside systems of work, speed, and urban order. There is something faintly surreal in that, though not in a loud or theatrical way. Prada has always been adept at making surrealism feel practical, almost livable. That tension carries the campaign.
The casting helps. Bella Hadid, Damson Idris, Louis Partridge, and Liu Wen each bring a distinct presence, yet the campaign does not over-rely on personality. David Sims keeps the tone spare enough that the concept remains central. That restraint is smart. It allows the clothes and the environment to speak in tandem, rather than competing for dominance.
What lingers most is the campaign’s sense of balance. Prada does not force the contradiction. It lets the friction sit. The city never fully disappears, and the beach never fully belongs. That unresolved in-between space is where the house often finds its most interesting images. It’s also what separates this from more conventional summer advertising. Many houses sell a dream of elsewhere. Prada sells the elegance of dislocation.
If there is a question, it is whether the campaign could have pushed its emotional register a touch further. The concept is strong, the composition persuasive, the brand language unmistakable. Yet the feeling remains cool, slightly withheld. Then again, that reserve may be part of the point. Prada rarely gives itself away too easily. It prefers to let the idea settle, and trust that the viewer will meet it there.
Prada Co-Creative Directors | Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons
Photography | David Sims
Creative Direction | Ferdinando Verderi
Cast | Bella Hadid, Damson Idris, Louis Partridge, and Liu Wen