David James is not exactly the name you would first associate with Prada campaigns. But the creative director of AnOther and AnOtherMan is the brains behind almost every Prada campaign since 1997, the art direction force behind one of the most visually unforgettable ads of all time. His works, spanning from 1998 to 2010 can be viewed at Out of Print!, an online exhibition that is up until May.
Prada SS 97
Photographer: Glen Luchford Stylist: Alex White
"All of the ideas were inspired by film and the production was nothing short of epic! Glen preferred shooting at either dawn or just before dusk, which meant that we could only do one to two shots a day! There's no digital manipulation in these images. Everything you see was done in-camera."
Prada FW 97
Photographer: Glen Luchford Stylist: Alex White
"The fall/winter campaign continues with the same approach from the previous season in that we used the same model but we developed the narrative, mood and atmosphere. In one of the shots the model is holding a shoe, but it actually looks like a gun."
Prada SS 98
Photographer: Glen Luchford Stylist: Alex White
"It was 1998 and we were thinking about what the next century might look like."
Prada Menswear SS 99
Photographer: Norbert Schoerner Stylist: David Bradshaw
"The portacabins are very modern but impersonal, like a prison or office. The character we created was very nervous and and anxious and we wanted an environment that would emphasize his state of mind."
Prada SS 2000
Photographer: Robert Wyatt Stylist: Lucy Ewing
"We came up with the idea of making the campaign look like a bourgeois television drama but it ended up looking like a stage play."
Prada SS 01
Photographer: Cedric Buchet Stylist: Alister Mackie
This still remains my favourite ad campaign of all time. I remember seeing this campaign some time back when I was flipping through my aunt's old fashion magazine, and was struck by the seemingly awkwardness of the models and the whole image.
"The shots weren't captured at random, they were very carefully set up. We wanted them to appear spontaneous and arbitrary, but the models and the props were actually painstakingly arranged in a very static way. That's why it looks like a frozen world. The compositions took a long time to perfect. It took us four weeks to shoot!"
Prada FW 02
Photographer: Steven Meisel Stylist: Lori Goldstein
"The pictures reference female icons from the history of fashion, film, art and literature."
Prada SS 04
Photographer: Steven Meisel Stylist: David Bradshaw
"The idea of the 'painted' campaign was inspired by the prints and the tie-dyeing used in the collection. When you look at the images closely, you can see that there are brush marks."
Prada SS 05
Photographer: Steven Meisel Stylist: David Bradshaw
"I found a book on exotic birds that became the inspiration for the campaign."
Prada FW 07
Photographer: Steven Meisel Stylist: Prada in-house
"We started off shooting the groups in camera, to work out the compositions, and then we re-shot each model separately and pieced the shot back together."
Prada SS 09
Photographer: Steven Meisel Stylist: Prada in-house
"The reference for this campaign was Greek and Roman sculptural reliefs, the kind you find on pediments on Roman architecture.While we were shooting, Steven asked the models to push and shove each other as they moved across the set."
"We posed the boys as if they were looking at the sculptural forms we had created in the other campaign." This was no doubt my favourite menswear campaign.
