EXCLUSIVE: Everything Is (Too) Placid on Prada’s Boat

CALM WATERS: While competitors are trying to navigate through the waves of luxury consumption’s slowdown, trade war woes and market challenges, things seem idyllic at Prada, backed by its parent company’s performance — sales rose 15 percent to 5.43 billion euros last year versus 2023 — and judging by its recent acquisition of Versace in a $1.4 billion deal.

If one had to take a snapshot of the group’s moment, it might come close to the campaign the Prada brand is to release on Tuesday. Dubbed “Days of Summer,” the images portray a cast headlined by the likes of Hunter Schafer, Troye Sivan and Kendall Jenner clutching their Prada bag of the season while standing on a pastel-hued boat that is sailing on placid waters.

Even too calm, as the effect is part soothing and part surreal. According to a statement, the serene yet utopian scenario conjured under the creative direction of Ferdinando Verderi aims to express “a sense of depth, a ceaseless horizon of possibility” and the carefree joy of summer. Talents’ “clothes are free too, combining references to city and sea, casual and formal, like a great escape from everyday life into the beyond,” the statement said.

Photographed by Oliver Hadlee Pearch, the cast also includes models such as Lina Zhang, Julia Nobis, Gideon Adniyi, Giuseppe Cirillo, Nikita Gnetnev, Noor Khan, Melinda Kiss, Hanna Leszek, Yuliana Perez and Liu Qingzheng.

As for Jenner, she returns to front a campaign for the brand after having appeared in the Prada fall 2022 images, while Schafer and Sivan have been affiliated with the label for a long time and been recurring faces of its campaigns and front row regulars at its fashion shows in Milan.

In tune with the new campaign’s concept, the colored Gozzos — the archetypal Italian wooden boats that appear in the images — were turned into the main element currently featured in Prada stores’ windows.