- Director: Barry Jenkins
- Client: Prada
- Category: Video Design — Brand
- Project Brief: Create a cinematic fragrance brand video that explores identity and self-expression through expressive lighting, refined visuals, and an evolving narrative.
A brand video for a perfume faces a strange design problem: it has to sell a scent using only picture and sound. Prada Paradoxe solves it by handing the job to Barry Jenkins, casting Zendaya in "Never the Same, Always Myself" and letting the piece play as a short film about identity rather than a straight perfume spot.
The story runs on a paradox the tagline names. Zendaya multiplies into different versions of herself, dancing with a double by a pool and drifting across a rooftop, so "evolving while staying myself" plays out as scenes instead of a slogan.
Jenkins shoots it with a filmmaker's control of light. Half-shadowed close-ups and muted, warm-toned framing mirror the theme of a divided self, giving the ad the intimacy and duality of cinema rather than a glossy commercial.
The setting and styling extend the reach without a hard sell. Mexico City and Cuernavaca architecture add cultural depth, while Zendaya's old-Hollywood air nods to Hepburn and Kelly, so a bottle glimpsed only briefly still lands inside a story that feels like art.
