A reflection of our concurrent realities, a multiplicitous vision of women, an ever-shifting perception of Prada. The Spring/Summer 2025 Prada campaign explores the notion of plurality, simultaneously celebrating individuality and the ceaseless facets that comprise the
Experiment in transformation is at play. Individualities are embodied by one individual: the actor Carey Mulligan, whose craft centers around the notion of reinvention, of encapsulating an other. To act is both to perform, and simply to behave – act as action, a way of living. Captured by Steven Meisel in a series of arresting portraits, Mulligan appears again and again, never the same and never herself – each guise is an entirely different individual, inventing a multitude of protagonists, different lives, each entirely separate, unpredictable, and unique. Yet each can be seen as a provoking distinct viewpoint on the ideology of Prada, a fragmented manifestation of its philosophy and ever-shifting surprising aesthetic, like sides of its character. In a direct reference to the Fall/Winter 2021 Feels like Prada campaign, Acts Like Prada serves as a mantra that acknowledges the performative nature of Prada as an idea.
Fashion here is a tool for change, clothes altering attitudes, shifting both our perceptions as viewers and Mulligan’s as performer. Yet these images are not just performances, rather they are embodiments of other lives, reflections of alternate realities channeled through one individual, fashion utilized as a tool to help transform.
Both utterly transformed and instantly recognizable, Mulligan’s constant reincarnations reflect the endless renewals at the heart of fashion. And as fashion is never static, neither is Prada – endlessly shifting and changing, it defies easy categorization and singularity, its unpredictability and simultaneous coexistence of contradictory elements a reflection both of humanity, and the world today. These are celebrations of people, and studies of Prada.
