Not Just A Pretty Face: The Cult Men Who Have Fronted Prada Campaigns
With awards season in full stride and our feeds inundated with celebrities as a result, it may have escaped your notice that Frank Ocean made his debut days ago as the face of Prada for Spring/Summer 2020. Given that the singer seldom does interviews or photo shoots, let alone full-on fashion campaigns, the news came as quite the shock, albeit a very pleasant one. Ocean famously (or infamously?) wore a Prada hoodie to the 2019 Met Gala, and then attended the brand’s Spring/Summer 2020 show in Shanghai, so perhaps it was a match waiting to happen, and as fans of both iconoclasts, we honestly can’t complain.
This is not the first time Italian label has handpicked a cult figure to front one of its campaigns. John Malkovich, Joaquin Phoenix, Willem Dafoe, James McAvoy, Ezra Miller, Ansel Elgort… The house’s history of leading men reads like a list of the entertainment industry’s best and brightest. Of course, having a celebrity as the face of a brand is nothing new, but what sets Prada apart is its constant eschewal of conveyor belt casting in favour of renegade talents with a vision as idiosyncratic as its own. Rousing rebels, in other words.
Here are some of our favourites:
John Malkovich — Fall/Winter 1995
Tim Roth — Spring/Summer 1996
Willem Dafoe — Fall/Winter 1996
Joaquin Phoenix — Spring/Summer 1997
Norman Reedus — Fall/Winter 1997
Gary Oldman, Jamie Bell, Garrett Hedlund, and Willem Dafoe — Fall/Winter 2012
Benicio del Toro — Spring/Summer 2013
Christoph Waltz — Fall/Winter 2013
Ezra Miller — Fall/Winter 2013
James McAvoy — Fall/Winter 2014
Ethan Hawke — Spring/Summer 2015
Ansel Elgort — Spring/Summer 2015
Miles Teller — Spring/Summer 2015
Michael Shannon — Fall/Winter 2015
