Prada’s newest campaign titled ‘Touch of Crude’ is, perhaps unsurprisingly, very chic. In a series of photos by long-time collaborator, David Sims, we see cult favourite French actor, Vincent Cassel, alongside fellow actor, Louis Partridge, actresses Hunter Schafer and Letita Wright, k-pop star Jaehyun Jeong, and models Rachel Williams and Guinevere van Seenus.
The campaign itself was inspired by classic Hollywood and European movies (with some added cred from Cassel). According to Prada, the images are frames within divergent stories that evoke a tension between differing views and lives.
As Prada put it, “Actors and models by their very nature encapsulate an otherness – the campaign plays off that multifaceted nature, where a plurality adds complexity. Alongside, crude contradicts – it implies simplicity, directness, and purity. Its touch is here in stark sets, like cinematic projections of realities – evocations of interiors, impressions of actuality, and traces of lives.”
The campaign is paired with a short film by Danish director, Nicholas Winding Refn (Drive [2011]), also titled Touch of Crude that was showcased at the Prada Spring Summer 2023 women’s runway show. It was part of an immersive installation that used the film and the show’s environ to provide “an opportunity for observation and intersection between two creative spheres.”
The film itself explores the lives of women and the scope of “fluid modern femininity.” It depicts a woman moving into a new place where she is visited by a Black Box in which she peers through to observe multiple universes each from a different woman’s perspective.
While the film is certainly not for everybody, it’s very European in its direction and pacing, it does somewhat successfully evoke the ideas it’s trying to get across. Now does that tie in with this recent campaign shoot? Eh, kind of. The way it is shot feels aesthetically similar, but stark backdrops and minimalistic clothing do not a theme make. It does, however, look very cool, which ultimately is the real reason it looks this way.
Check out the short film here.
