The Prada Fall 2023 ad campaign unfolds as a series of imaginary conversations between flowers and stars Benedict Cumberbatch, Hunter Schafer, Kodi Smit-McPhee,  Letitia Wright, and Li Xian.

Beauty, care, love are brought to life through the metaphor of flowers – both totems and gestures of tenderness and affection – here reimagined to human size, a scale that suggests otherworldly emotions. An impossible sequence of surreal conversations unfold, between these figures and flowers, a dialogue, literal and visual. Flowers themselves are ageless symbols of a beauty between the everyday and the extraordinary – in and of themselves can be seen as conduits of emotion, physical expressions of the intangible.

Just as these conversations are paradoxical, so the flower itself is a dichotomy – both fragile and strong, precious and quotidian, ephemeral yet eternal, each one unique. A metaphor for humanity, used as an outer expression of our thoughts and feelings, we can find a synergy between flowers and an embodiment of the human experience – always implied, here made concrete. A real emotion, evoked through these seemingly unreal images.