January 31, 2018 |
In 1941 when June Tarpé Mills first gave life to Miss. Fury, the first female superhero created by one of the first major female comic artists, she was forced to do so under the pseudonym Tarpé in order to conceal her gender and give Miss. Fury a chance of survival. A similar tale of resistance follows several other of the all-female ensemble who now, some seventy years later, feature on the clothing and backdrops of Prada’s Spring/ Summer 2018 Campaign, revealing an inspiring extension of the September show message, namely, women, by women.
It is a fitting re-appropriation of Mills’ own work and one she would doubtlessly approve of – where Miss Fury would once stick it to spies, terrorists and Nazis, not to mention her arch nemesis Countess Erica Von Kampf, here she not only underscores the power of the collection, but sends an allegorical message of strength and defiance too. We’re very into it. Shot by Willy Vanderperre, the campaign is of course, just as much about the other women whose work adorns the collection, including Brigid Elva, Joëlle Jones, Stellar Leuna, Giuliana Maldini, Natsume Ono, Emma Ríos, Trina Robbins and Fiona Staples. Just as with the show, there are some meta forces at work here, as Prada’s cast of models quite literally embody the identity bestowed upon them by this group of women and their creations, they themselves become authors of their own destiny, heroines of their own stories.
