Written By: Rhea Lobo
Prada’s newest campaign with Director Barry Jenkins for Fall/Winter 2026 is the latest of many in Miuccia Prada's film excursions. From Romeo and Juliet in 1996, to collaborations with Wes Anderson, to Fondazione Prada's Film Fund, Prada and the arts go together like dandelions and daydreams.
“Study, study, study. Learn, watch movies, watch art, read literature and learn that a piece of clothing serves the role of making you live better, ” we all heard Miuccia Prada say in 2020, her words of advice echoing across the ether. She continued about fashion, “it has to be useful and help define your personality.”
Prada’s latest campaign for Fall/Winter 2026 was yet another example of Prada’s relationship with film. Directed by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Barry Jenkins, the short follows characters played by Hunter Schafer, Troye Sivan, Chen Haoyu, and Kelvin Harrison Jr., each embodying different everyday moments. The clothes are in conversation with the wearer, the wearer in conversation with themselves, and the camera picking it all up.
Courtesy of Prada
In the film, the characters are being perceived – watched, looked at, examined – an element to Prada’s campaigns that we’ve seen as a through line. That’s exactly what’s intimate vs performative. ‘Ugly chic’ defines each character in boundless different ways from the perfectionists’ imperfections peeking through, or the self-reflective talk-to-themselves-aholic. As an audience, we’re led to perceive these differences through the way their clothes are worn, combined, and accessorized as extensions of their personalities.
It’s the pursuit of learning, curiosity, and involvement in the arts that allow Prada to offer point of views on individuality, to build these garments that are outlets for the inner being. Perhaps that’s the reason Prada and film go great together, and bringing Barry Jenkins on is not her first film rodeo. Journey with Sorbet through Prada’s lasting legacy in the world of film…
MIUCCIA PRADA AND BAZ LUHRMANN
To know literature is to know Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet. In her first major film injection, Miuccia began her onscreen relationship with Director Baz Luhrmann, dressing the Montague of Montagues, Romeo (played by a young Leonardo DiCaprio in his prime) for his wedding. Costume Designer Kym Barrett was attracted to Miuccia for her “pure, understated lines” which created the navy suit seen in the film, accompanied by the crispiest white shirt and floral tie. 30 years on, Prada’s outfitting Sadie Sink (playing Juliet) for the opening and after-party of her Romeo & Juliet debut on the West End in homage to Claire Danes’ iconic angel white dress in the 1996 film.
Partnering with Oscar-winning costume designer Catherine Martin, Prada also drew up over 40 cocktail and evening dresses for Luhrmann’s film adaptation of The Great Gatsby, reinterpreting archival Prada and Miu Miu runway pieces for the Jazz Age. Then Catherine, Baz, and Miuccia reconnected once again on the set of ELVIS (2022) over hundreds of looks for Elvis (played by Austin Butler) with the same pizzazz the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll once sang to.
PRADA’S GALLERIA BAG
One of many short film favorites comes from Prada’s Galleria campaign Ritual Identities (2025) late last year, starring Scarlett Johansson as she cloned herself from the peculiar added contents of her bag – to each their own. The campaign’s direction is led by award-winning Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos, best known for his films Bugonia (2025) and Poor Things (2023) starring muse Emma Stone, he brings his surrealist and experimental perspective to Prada.
ScarJo and the Galleria also shared the screen two years ago under the direction of Englishman Jonathan Glazer for Prada The Galleria (2024). “His face was as the heavens and therin stuck,” Scarlett recited in the short from Shakespeare’s play Antony and Cleopatra alongside other lines from Macbeth, “screw your courage to the sticking place”. It was the making of the actor, and the making of the Galleria amalgamating into a black-and-white-turned-color film celebrating the humanity behind both film and craftsmanship. It’s the sort of relationship only Prada would think to link.
Bar Luce | Courtesy of Fondazione Prada
MIUCCIA PRADA AND WES ANDERSON
The relationship where Prada meets Wes Anderson’s kooky cinema is one to be studied. The 8-minute short film Castello Cavalcanti (2013) starring a 1950s race car driver (played by Jason Schwartzman) in Italy was the beginnings of Prada’s and Wes Anderson’s collaborations. The short was also the third of Prada Classics, a creative project series that debuted in 2008 under Miuccia redefining fashion, design, art, and architecture. Since then, Prada has famously dressed Willem Dafoe as Joplin in The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), and walked Willem down runways.
Prada went on to invite the American film director to design Bar Luce in Fondazione Prada, “the approach I used to design this bar is exactly the opposite I usually use for the set designs of my movies,” Wes said. Turns out, Miuccia Prada is the dreamers delight as Wes notes, “when I was really young I wanted to be an architect, and this chance I’ve been given to pretend to be a real one is a childhood fantasy come true!”
THE FONDAZIONE PRADA FILM FUND
Miuccia Prada may have uttered her famous quote in 2020 and continued her exploration of cinema since but 27 years before then, in 1993, she and her husband Patrizio Bertelli embarked on a major project into the arts with Fondazione Prada. The cultural institution operates with the same philosophy Miuccia spoke about that day, that art and study are useful and necessary. Within it is an initiative supporting international independent cinema, the Fondazione Prada Film Fund began last year with an annual endowment of 1.5 million euros, offering up to 100,000 euros per project. In 2025, the inaugural 14 projects by global filmmakers across 5 continents began production, representing Prada’s commitment to investigate cinematographic practices, and this August the newest submissions will hit the Fondazione’s offices with the selected projects being announced in February 2027.
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