Review of Prada ‘The Glass Age’ Spring 2023 Ad Campaign by Creative Director Ferdinando Verderi with Talent Scarlett Johansson and Artist Alex Da Corte
Prada explores a mirrored world of pop surrealism with a new campaign, “The Glass Age,” created in collaboration with multi-disciplinary artist Alex Da Corte and starring iconic actor Scarlett Johansson. Highlighting the house’s Galleria bag, the campaign also features creative direction from Ferdinando Verderi.
An American conceptual artist who works in painting, sculpture, installation, and video, Da Corte often uses surreal imagery and everyday objects in his practice to explore ideas of consumerism, pop culture, mythology, and literature. He is probably best known for his colorful installations that blend architectural design and film, and also frequently collaborates with other artists across different creative fields.
His campaign film follows Johansson through a dreamworld of color-blocking, an abstract and vibrant space of pop-art brightness. Making excellent use of her mellifluous voice (we wish she could narrate every audiobook), she repeats the phrase “Our love is reds and yellows and blues and greens, our love is lavenders and browns and golds and grays,” as she shifts across a fluctuating spectrum of inscrutable emotional states. Meanwhile, the colors of the space shift about her, and the camera team deploys brilliant cinematographic tricks to reflect and distort our experience and expectations of looking through glass or into mirrors.
The accompanying still shots of the campaign comprise some of the film’s most striking shots, giving us some more time and space to take in the actual star bag while we’re not experiencing a euphoric sensory overload.
Leave it to Prada to go all in on a handbag campaign: while most big brands keep things conceptually and visually simple for these non-seasonal, one-product campaigns, Prada is firing on all cylinders here as it brings its signature intellectualism and idiosyncratic artistic flair to the campaign, as well as working with two major collaborators. Vibrant, emotive, mysterious yet immediate, the results speak for themselves as the campaign draws us completely into its vivid world.
Prada Creative Directors | Miuccia Prada & Raf Simons
Creative Director | Ferdinando Verderi
Concept, Artwork, and Direction | Alex Da Corte
Talent | Scarlett Johansson
Makeup | Frankie Boyd
Set Designer | Mary Howard