PRADA Womenswear SS2016 Advertising Campaign

PRADA Womenswear SS2016 Advertising Campaign presents an investigation into cyclical evolution, fragmenting and layering the decades of the past to refigure them into modernity. Steven Meisel’s campaign images suspend Sasha Pivovarova, Natalia Vodianova and Yasmin Wijnaldum within a temporal ambiguity. Their undone elegance and relaxed femininity emphasize the rebellious and chic wrongness at the heart of the collection. Subversive tailoring and surreal accessories - evoking a subtle yet daring sensuality - are innovative but at once loyal to the unconventional aesthetic of Prada-ism beauty. A conservative eccentricity work of de- and reconstruction of the women’s wardrobe key pieces mixing the traditional with the contemporary and the feminine with the masculine.

These amalgamations provoke an elegant frenzy of material disorientation. During a period that privileges the acceleration of the new, Prada S/S16 creates a timeless yet distinctly contemporary synthesis of the past: a provocative reimagining of convention. The transitory atmosphere of the set becomes a hyper-real space where the cast traverse time, as well as distance. They are post-classic, contemporary nomads abstracted from a definitive temporality: composites of past and present, layered with irreverence.