Prada's Personas

The Prada woman is dynamic, modern, and constantly evolving. With the luxury fashion house’s new publication Ten Protagonists, it animates characters from its Spring/Summer 2025 campaign, Act Like Prada, paired with short stories by Ottessa Moshfegh. Throughout the book, fictional, first-person anecdotes accompany Steven Meisel’s photographs of actor Carey Mulligan, styled as 10 different personas. Moshfegh—the award-winning author of My Year of Rest and Relaxation, 2018, and more recently Lapvona, 2022—honestly depicts women in the same way the brand crafts clothes for them. The result is a collaboration that captures individual and complex personalities in vivid text and subversive staples. No less is expected from a Prada publication.

Mulligan sports a brown bob with bangs and wears a shiny yellow raincoat layered over a silver sequined gown, a space-mod poodle skirt paired with black sneakers, and a red and turquoise sweater. This character joins the many faces of Prada, who bounce from blonde to brunette, curly to straight, and girly to sporty, as Moshfegh skillfully captures their worlds.

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Ten Protagonists builds off Prada’s most recent campaign, which featured another literary collaboration, this time with Miranda July. Actors Harris Dickinson, Hunter Schafer, and Damson Idris were photographed by Willy Vandeperre in passionate rotary phone conversations. Real phone numbers emblazoned on billboards depicting these scenes invited passersby to dial in and engage with July herself by way of snippets of pre-recorded dialogue.

Now, enter Moshfegh. While new to authoring the Prada universe, she has a history with fashion, both personally and professionally; she once walked the runway for Maryam Nassir Zadeh and has penned show notes for Proenza Schouler. Paired with Prada mainstay Meisel, who has photographed Prada campaigns since 2004, Moshfegh’s fresh perspective further evolves the brand’s storytelling. And as the leading star, Mulligan’s dynamic depictions draw on her previous roles in critically acclaimed films such as Maestro (2023), Saltburn (2023), and Promising Young Woman (2020). Who better than this revered amalgamation of creatives to conceive Prada’s new publication?

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Ten Protagonists will be available during select in-store events in Paris, London, Milan, and Tokyo beginning this month.