The ultimate paradox of Prada: immediately recognizable yet impossible to define

 

The Prada Spring/Summer 2020 womenswear campaign offers a multitude of views and perspectives that reflect that dichotomy- of the ever-shifting landscape of women that constantly inspire, and of the plurality of definitions of Prada.

There is a power to the word as a tool to define, and in Prada’s case, to challenge definitions, to re-define, de-contextualize and recalibrate, to evoke an imaginary narrative and hence change our eye as we examine the picture plane.

The Prada campaign revolves around a series of written acronyms, spelling out the word PRADA.

Like the images they are placed alongside, each of these acronyms offers a possible interpretation of the idea of Prada, but only one of many. Ironic, surreal, ambivalent, dichotomic, these many attempts at definition ultimately only prove the indefinability of Prada as a single concept or idea.

Like the acronyms, each image of the campaign offers a different perspective – through these differing views on the world, they, in fact, propose entirely different worlds, personal to each, shifting our perceptions on their axes. Another paradox: although comprising a collective campaign, these images are entirely individual. Rather than fragments of identities, these are each realized selves – if they offer contradictory angles of the same whole, it is the whole of Prada.

Photographed by Jamie Hawkesworth, the images bring to life a sense of perpetual renewal and reworking of photographic language.

The casting of the campaign is also dichotomous, expressing through a spectrum of models – both well-known and new faces – a world of women. These images encapsulate their characters and personalities, celebrate their distinction. These women include Freja Beha, Sara Blomqvist, Anna Ewers, Berit Heitman, Ruiqi Jiang, Ashley Radjarame, Kyla Ramsey, Charlotte Rose, MiriamSanchez and Zso Varju.

These images, interpret – literally – the multiple identities within Prada, and within the Prada woman. Yet, like the world itself, they never settle, never pause. They are always and never the same.