The new campaign highlights three different artists to represent the three sides of Prada.
The new campaign highlights three different artists to represent the three sides of Prada.
In honor of the Prada Symbole handbag, the luxury fashion house enlists three of art’s modern masters to capture the founding principles of the brand and bag. Catherine Opie, Thomas Ruff and Carrie Mae Weens look to subjectivity, interpretation, and perspectives as inspiration for their work. The new campaign uses a series of divergent and distinct portraits to highlight the iconic bag and actor and Prada ambassador Hunter Schafer.
Opie, Ruff, and Weens work have rarely, if ever, been printed in the form of a fashion campaign. Not only is Prada expanding the world of modern art, but welcomes new figures into the world of fashion. The campaign aims to respect the processes and meanings of art and fashion, while questioning and challenging each creative sphere. Art and fashion work together to the explore the blurred boundaries between each discipline.
Although each artist captures the same figure and object, their practices, methodology, and results express their individuality. Like the Symbole, the creative process explores different sides and facets. Opie focuses on the body and identity, using new codes of beauty to sculpt Schafer into a series of triangles. She fuses together woman and object. Ruff distorts and manipulates reality by re-interpreting ready-made images. The objective value of the photograph brings about questions regarding our idea of image. Weems uses concepts of identity, representation, project, and notions of transformation and courage in her imagery. Schafer uses her acting abilities to transform into the art each creator aims to capture.
The new Prada Symbole campaign is not only a character study of the handbag, but of Schafer herself through triangles- a geometric representation of the characteristics of Prada.
