Prada Hired a Disney Legend to Draw Its Holiday Ads by Hand
The 'Drawing Prada' campaign stars Sadie Sink, Maya Hawke, and veteran Disney animator John Pomeroy, whose credits include Pocahontas. Pomeroy says there is a very distinct reason to draw by hand in 2026.
Prada's 2026 holiday campaign was drawn by hand. Every cartoon fox, every animated shoe-stealing mouse, every frame of its winter fantasy world was produced by John Pomeroy, a Disney animator whose credits run from Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too to Pocahontas to Fantasia 2000. The campaign, released Tuesday as a WWD exclusive, is titled 'Drawing Prada.'
Glen Luchford shot the photography. Per Yahoo News Singapore, which carried the WWD exclusive, a series of short films pairs Luchford's live-action stills with Pomeroy's 2D animation in winter fantasy settings. The cast and their cartoon antagonists: a cynical fox trails Maya Hawke through snow; mice steal Sadie Sink's shoes; a snow lynx chases Chen Haoyu's bag; rabbits and bats play with Luther Ford's leather accessories. Kelvin Harrison Jr. also appears in the campaign.
It was an absolute honor to direct these films for Prada. There is a very distinct and purposeful reason for choosing hand-drawn work: to show that hand-drawn and handcrafted work still has value.
What It Costs to Do It the Old Way
Pomeroy did not name artificial intelligence directly, but the frame is clear. AI image generators can produce fashion campaign visuals at a fraction of the cost of a traditional shoot, and the luxury industry has been tracking how to defend its handcraft positioning against that pressure for two years. Hiring a Disney-era animator to draw every frame by hand is the Prada version of 'made in Italy': proof of deliberate human expense, which is one of the things luxury pricing signals.
WWD described the campaign as Prada's response to AI-generated content in advertising. Whether that framing originated with the brand or with the reporter is not clear from the published excerpt; Prada has not issued a separate statement on the AI angle. What Pomeroy stated directly is that hand-drawn work has value precisely because it requires a human to execute it frame by frame.
One counterpoint worth noting: Prada has used animation in holiday campaigns before. The brand's 2024 holiday campaign, produced by London studio Blinkink, used CG animation and featured Maya Hawke and Kelvin Harrison Jr. in a dinner party setting with Prada's 'Trick' robots. The 2026 move to hand-drawn is a technique change and a louder statement about craft, but the brand's comfort with animation predates any current AI moment by at least one campaign cycle.
Two Stranger Things Stars, One Campaign
Sadie Sink and Maya Hawke are Stranger Things co-stars and both are established Prada ambassadors. Prada's Holiday 2025 campaign, 'A Winter's Tale,' featured Hawke in a starring role, also shot by Luchford. The 2026 'Drawing Prada' campaign is the second consecutive holiday season Prada has centered Hawke in its visual program, and the first to bring Sink into the same frame.
For Prada, that casting layer carries its own brand logic: Sink and Hawke are the franchise-familiar faces its 2026 audience recognizes from streaming and now from multiplexes (Sink appeared in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, released July 2026). The campaign deploys that recognition against a winter aesthetic that leans pre-digital: hand-drawn foxes and mice instead of algorithmic grain.
The 'Drawing Prada' campaign runs through the 2026 holiday season. Glen Luchford has now photographed Prada's holiday campaign in back-to-back years. A behind-the-scenes video was released alongside the campaign images. Prada has not specified a campaign end date.
Ad Watch News is an independent commentary site with no affiliation with Prada, Miu Miu Group, or any talent or agency mentioned here. This piece draws on published sources listed below.
Sources & further reading
- Yahoo News Singapore (WWD exclusive): Sadie Sink, Maya Hawke in Prada Drawing Prada holiday 2026 campaign (Oct 27, 2026)
- AWN: Blinkink and Partner Films on Prada 2024 holiday campaign with Maya Hawke and Kelvin Harrison Jr. (Dec 2024)
- 10 Magazine Australia: Prada Holiday 2025 "A Winter's Tale," Glen Luchford photographer, Maya Hawke (Nov 2025)
- Wikimedia Commons: Maya Hawke at Sid The Cat Auditorium, Justin Higuchi (jus10h), CC BY 4.0, April 2026
