It’s hard to believe that Prada has wowed the crowd with its high-end luxury designs now for over 100 years. The launch of its spring/summer collection for 2014 proves that nothing has changed. Tied into a carefully orchestrated publicity campaign, the luxury brand, once again, delivers.
Synchronised with the release of the new series of outfits, Prada’s latest marketing project features an in-tune collaboration between Miuccia Prada and leading fashion photographer Steven Meisel.
Designed to promote the Italian luxury brand’s new, fresh, and innovative hymns to design, Prada and Meisel assembled a choir of spirited, supra-beautiful sirens. The girls, hired to model the clothes, are also asked to stare straight down the lens of the camera and react to scripted scenarios: act as if you are at a tennis match; a horror movie; a night at the opera. The “gazed at” suddenly become the “gazing out at,” as Prada flirts with the fashion cognoscenti.
The campaign is a representation of Prada’s high-flying “kite,” always on top of contemporary fashion currents while holding fashionistas transfixed with its creations. The watched watching, as leading fashion brand meets clued-up consumer in a marriage of mutual advantage.
The ad project to highlight the 2014 collection was developed from the aptly titled “In the Art of the Multitude” from September 2013. Muralists, illustrators and painters were engaged on a collaborative project with a brief to produce a powerful representation of femininity and multiplicity on the walls of the show space at Via Fogazzaro in Milan.
The end result? The evolved spring and summer collection for 2014, bearing all the hallmarks of Prada style, quality and creativeness.
Designs are feminine, eye-catching, playful and engaging. Bright and subtle colors mixed and blended in attractive combinations. Dresses, coats and accessories are brought to life with giant mural prints of female faces and sparkling leaf-like ribbons that meander around the hips and fall vertically from the shoulder to waist.
Necklines are detailed in athletic stripe, which resonate with sporty tube socks encrusted with candyesque crystals. Handbags crackle with crocodile and shiny saffiano, in a bold, feminine themed, product show.
The vehicle used to transport the collection and campaign to an elevated level is the aforementioned super-model troupe: Julia Bergshoeff, Dorota Kullova, Ashleigh Good, Gracie Van Gastel, Amanda Murphy, Viktor Van Pelt, Maggie Jablonski, Lieke Van Houten, Maja Salamon, Ola Rudnicka, Sabrina Ioffreda, Magdalena Jasek, Nastya Sten, Cindy Bruna, Anna Ewers, Ophelie Guillermand, Maliake Firth, and Lexi Bolling.
This is the fashion house on the march. The Prada ensemble struts its stuff with panache and a century of swagger across the luxury end of the fashion market.
Another 100 years beckons.
