Despite the generally out-of-reach nature of celebrities and high fashion, through social media, the internet, and magazines we are able to grasp this foreign world within an arms-length — almost parasocially so. The new campaign ‘Image of an Image’ for Prada’s SS26 collection by Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons is a charming wink at the relationships between advertising, fashion, and viewers.
In its essence, parasocial behaviour is the ways people create illusions of intimacy and closeness by crossing the divide between fan and celebrity. Since celebrities are turned into spectacles, isn’t it only natural that we become spectators? Or is it our constant gaze, admiration, and attention that raise these distant figures onto pedestals of aspiration?
This year, Prada commissioned artist Anne Collier to execute a portfolio of images that re-contextualises our idea of fashion campaigns within the digital age. Collier’s visions turns the SS26 campaign into something physical — a material object to be held and felt.
Shot by Oliver Hadlee Pearch, each still life composition is held by a pair of hands, creating the effect of an additional observer. Consequently, the core of advertising is laid bare as the viewer is forced to identify with the hands of the onlooker who holds the photographs with admiration (and maybe even desire) for the campaign and models.
SS26 Prada pieces are worn by an ensemble of actors and personalities in the campaign including: actors Hunter Schafer, Nicholas Hoult, Carey Mulligan, Levon Hawke, and Damson Idris, musician John Glacier, and model Liu Wen. All the models — except for Nicholas Hoult who purposefully averts his gaze — stares straight at the camera. After all, it’s fitting for the campaign models’ occupations in industries built on the importance of perception and visibility.
By creating this doubling effect from the models looking at us looking at them, the campaign instantly sparks discourse about our complicity in looking and the common practice of parasociality in the digital age. Image of an Image is both a celebration and a liberation from common fashion imagery; it’s an outside consideration of fashion through the lens of fine art and objective truths.
This article was first seen on Men’s Folio Singapore.
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