In the age of AI , handmade work is becoming radical (and chic), and consumers are taking notice.
Prada’s new holiday campaign, Drawing Prada , celebrates craft and process, earning praise on social media for its use of handmade animation.
The campaign transports the actors Chen Haoyu, Luther Ford, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Maya Hawke, and Sadie Sink into a fairy tale–like animated forest, complete with a cozy cabin and charming woodland creatures.
In one scene, Harrison Jr. walks through a snowy path only to be hit by a snowball thrown by an animated cat-like figure who quickly turns around and whistles, trying to have nothing to do with it.
In another, Sink kneels beside a fireplace and peers into a mouse hole, finding a trio of mice atop a Prada bag and a shoe, all while munching on cheese.
But it is not just the whimsy that is capturing the attention of consumers. The animations are hand drawn by animator John Pomeroy, whose work includes films like Thumbelina and Disney’s Pocahontas and Fantasia 2000 . Prada went out of its way to highlight the handmade process.
In the campaign’s images, the actors are superimposed on top of the artist’s sketches and process, as a sort of reminder to viewers that the work is made by humans. It’s a refreshing counter to the AI slop metastasizing across media.
The campaign draws on what luxury fashion has always sold: handcraft and quality. Now the ads are catching up, made as couture as the clothes.
“In an AI world, I’m crying with Prada reviving 2D—go back to making animations like that immediately,” one user said on X . Another added, “The only good thing that AI is going to bring is that big brands, to stand out, will choose the traditional.”
A growing trend
Unsurprisingly, brands tapping into craftsmanship for their marketing efforts has become a trend—particularly for luxury brands.
Earlier this year, Hermès hired an artist to hand-illustrate its website, filling it with oceanic creatures like seahorses, fish, eels, and starfish. The texture of the paper grain peeked through the design, emphasizing its handmade nature, all crafted with ink and paper by French artist Linda Merad .
Sometimes, the return to traditional crafts can take a less analog approach. Ralph Lauren, for instance, created a Wimbledon-inspired campaign with Tom Hiddleston, using CGI to bring its iconic teddy bear mascot to life. The brand’s Instagram caption specified it was made using “live-action footage and CGI technology,” going out of its way to communicate that the video was not AI slop.
The trend is also making its way outside of the fashion space. Take luxury hair care brand Oribe , whose holiday collection is a collaboration with French mosaic artist Mathilde Herrero. The campaign’s videos feature the artist crafting the mosaics that wrap around the boxes for the holiday sets, bringing the product’s signature colors like purple and gold into the design.
These new craftsmanship-centered campaigns are also redefining how brands can understand what meaningful investment in creative looks like, especially as they fight for attention.
“The industry has trained itself to read ROI as a click-through rate,” says Dayna Carney, founder of creative agency Daynas House. “The Prada campaign is already moving on its own, through shares and saves. It’s being talked about in the group chat, which is the only distribution that still holds any weight.”
Carney also says that the effort of world building can translate beyond a single campaign, with possibilities to create follow-up stories with similar motifs.
“The creatures could end up on a scarf or a bag charm. That is the part that lasts,” Carney added. “Most holiday work is forgotten by December 31. This will be remembered and talked about.”
[Illustration: Linda Merad for Hermès]
Human touch is the new luxury
Craftsmanship is having its moment just as AI slop floods feeds. But while it can read as rebellion, it is also a reminder that taste, however you define it, is inherently human.
“In order to develop taste, you have to have a rich inner life,” says Liana Satenstein, a former senior fashion writer at Vogue and author of the fashion newsletter Neverworns . “You have to read, you have to go out, you have to have a world of experiences to develop that. As much as you try to do that with AI, you can’t do that. it’s almost like putting lipstick on a pig.”
It makes sense that the fashion world, which banks on tastemaking, is going all in on handmade techniques in its campaigns.
“Luxury fashion has always run on trust and taste, usually in that order,” Carney says. “Embracing handcraft isn’t a deliberate pushback on AI. It’s just that AI is technology without either.”
