Prada Fall 2021 Ad Campaign

Review of Prada Fall 2021 Ad Campaign by Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons with Creative Director Ferdinando Verderi with Photographer David Sims

Prada and Ferdinando Verderi share a moodboard for the moment. Titled Feels Like Prada, the brand’s Fall 2021 campaign is an emotional exploration of proximity and feeling, both in the sense of physical tactility and of emotional spectra.

Photographer David Sims takes several photographic approaches to create the imagery for the campaign, which are then united in a series of four disparate yet conversational images. From intimate black-and-white portraits, to still lifes, to richly colored and candidly dynamic shots of the models among in-between moments of shooting, the photographs comprise quite an emotional range.

Also included in the mix, and the most conceptually intriguing of them, are photographs of building facades that have been completely covered in knit fabric featuring patterns from the collection. It’s a brilliant way to translate the spirit of the pieces into a real-world, guerilla, textile street art project – yarn bombing, but make it gigantic and couture.

United into a single piece, the images take on a new emotional life through their physical proximity to each other. As our eye is drawn from one image to the next, we become aware of a shifting emotional landscape that rises out of the similarities and differences of the images it encounters. Though the approach feels intellectual as only Prada can be, the results tap into a more primary and immediate experiential realm of instinct, emotion, and tactility.

Prada has also planned to further bring this narrative to life through a variety of experimental activations during Fall 2021, spanning digital and physical media. Real-world spaces and quotidian objects will be enveloped in tactile patterns drawn from the collection, alongside the building facades featured in the campaign imagery – objects and places that can be touched, felt.

With a scope that feels both grand and intimate, and a deftly interwoven concept and physicality, the campaign is a deep exploration of what it means to feel like Prada.