Celebrity

Prada Embraces Authenticity with Harris Dickinson for Spring 2025 Campaign

January 7, 2025

Prada SS25 Campaign Harris Dickinson

Prada is taking an unconventional approach to its Spring-Summer 2025 menswear campaign, tapping British actor Harris Dickinson in a series that deliberately strips away theatrical pretense. The campaign, photographed by Steven Meisel with creative direction by Ferdinando Verderi, marks a strategic shift in luxury fashion advertising toward raw authenticity.

The imagery builds on the collection's central theme of "realism meets fantasy" first presented at the Fondazione Prada's Deposito during Milan Fashion Week. Under the creative direction of Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons, the season explores the tension between authenticity and artifice through technically innovative details like wired collars and trompe-l'œil elements.

Dickinson, who recently earned a BAFTA nomination for "Murder at The End of The World" and stars opposite Nicole Kidman in the Golden Globe-nominated "Baby Girl," appears without artifice in the images. Different elements of his character emerge throughout the campaign, shifting from dynamic to contemplative, energetic to nonchalant, each mood transforming the collection's pieces through his presence.

Prada SS25 Campaign Harris Dickinson

In the campaign, classic menswear pieces transform through Dickinson's presence – each garment taking on new life with his movements and mood. The collection's playful subversion of luxury codes comes alive: collars dance with hidden wires, creases tell stories of lived experience, and proportions shift between referential and radical. It's a delicate dance between the familiar and the fantastical, where even the most traditional pieces harbor surprising secrets.

The collection's runway debut set the stage for this narrative, quite literally, with its dreamlike "fairytale ravescape" anchored by a minimalist hut – a metaphor perhaps for the collection's grounding in reality despite its flights of fancy. Here, superhero motifs found themselves in unexpected company with Bernard Buffet artworks, reimagined as concert merchandise in a brilliant collision of high art and street culture.

Now arriving in Prada boutiques worldwide, the collection offers a fresh perspective on menswear classics, where patinated surfaces and proportion play create a new vocabulary of luxury. Each piece carries the evidence of its own story – some borrowed from father's closets, others seemingly beamed in from a fashion future. The collection's magnetic pull was evident at its runway debut, where it drew an eclectic crowd including Louis Partridge, Joe Alwyn, and Theaster Gates – each bringing their own interpretation to Prada's vision.

This campaign, with its stripped-back authenticity, arrives at a moment when luxury fashion is rewriting its own rules of engagement. Through Dickinson – whose meteoric rise includes standout performances in "Triangle of Sadness" and "The Iron Claw" – Prada offers a fresh perspective on how heritage houses can speak to a new generation of luxury consumers who crave substance as much as style. The campaign images, set to appear globally this month, suggest that in fashion's ongoing dialogue between fantasy and reality, both can coexist beautifully.