Prada has put visible human craft at the centre of its Holiday 2026 advertising with Drawing Prada: Animated by Hand, a campaign that combines live-action fashion imagery with traditional hand-drawn animation.
Prada’s official campaign page describes Drawing Prada as a holiday fantasy “created by hand.” The campaign stars Chen Haoyu, Luther Ford, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Maya Hawke and Sadie Sink in short films and still images that place the actors inside winter scenes filled with illustrated animals, storybook settings and hand-drawn motion.
The official credits list Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons as creative directors, Ferdinando Verderi as campaign creative director, Glen Luchford as photographer and director, and John Pomeroy as animation director.
Prada says the still images and films combine real-life action with illustrated animation, with Luchford’s lighting and perspective designed to mirror the hand-drawn environments. The drawings are not treated as decorative overlays. They are built into the photographic world, so the medium becomes part of the viewing experience.
John Pomeroy gives the work its animation weight
Pomeroy’s involvement gives the campaign more than a nostalgic look. His official biography says he began working at Walt Disney in 1973, later worked as directing animator and producer on An American Tail and The Land Before Time, returned to Disney as supervising animator on Pocahontas, and also worked on projects including Fantasia 2000, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Treasure Planet, Curious George and The Simpsons Movie.
Animation World Network reported that Pomeroy led the artists who drew the campaign’s characters and scenery by hand. ELLE also reported that each movement was rendered by hand before the creatures were placed into the live-action scenes.
In behind-the-scenes comments reported by ELLE, Animation World Network and Euronews, Pomeroy framed hand-drawn animation as a way to show “value in the human touch.” That line captures why the campaign has travelled beyond fashion media and into a wider conversation about creative production.
The AI comparison is implied, not declared
Prada’s official campaign copy does not mention artificial intelligence. The campaign does not need to present itself as an anti-AI statement to benefit from the contrast.
The release arrives after several high-profile AI advertising debates, especially around holiday campaigns. Marketing-Interactive reported in November 2025 that Coca-Cola’s AI-driven holiday ads drew mixed reaction, citing CARMA data that found 10.2% of conversations were positive and 32% negative after launch. The same report said many online critics questioned the reliance on AI production and compared the ads unfavourably with earlier campaigns.
That context does not prove audiences reject every AI-assisted campaign. It does show that production choices have become part of brand perception. For seasonal advertising, where nostalgia, warmth and memory do much of the emotional work, the way an image is made can affect how the image is received.
Why Prada’s choice works as positioning
For a luxury house, hand-drawn animation is a coherent choice. Prada sells taste, craft and cultural association as much as individual products. A campaign that shows the artist’s hand gives those ideas a visual form.
The campaign also gives the products a more memorable stage. The bags, shoes and winter pieces are not dropped into generic holiday scenery. They become objects inside small illustrated moments, from woodland characters to animated winter scenes. That gives the advertising a storybook quality while keeping the product visible.
What smaller brands should take from the campaign
The lesson is not that every business should commission hand-drawn animation. Most brands do not have Prada’s budget, talent access or cultural permission to turn a holiday campaign into a miniature animated film.
Prada is choosing a production process that matches the values the brand wants the audience to associate with the work: patience, skill, imagination and human authorship. If a brand wants to communicate care, precision or originality, the work has to show those qualities. Faster production is useful only when the finished piece still feels considered.
The same standard applies to AI-assisted content. Speed has business value, but human judgment still has to protect accuracy, usefulness and audience trust, a point Tech Help Canada has covered in its guidance on AI-generated content and search quality risk.
What to watch next
Prada has not published production costs, campaign performance metrics or sales impact for Drawing Prada. Any claim about commercial results would be premature.
If more brands respond to AI fatigue by making process visible, the next stage of creative competition may not be AI versus human work in a simple binary. It may be whether the finished work gives audiences a reason to care how it was made.
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