How Prada preserves the festive spirit with its Fire Horse Fair

Each year, after the initial surge of Chinese New Year celebrations subsides, the Lantern Festival — observed on the 15th day of the first lunar month — marks the season’s true close. For many in China, it is not a standalone holiday but the emotional culmination of the entire New Year cycle. From New Year’s Eve vigils to lantern-viewing a fortnight later, families seal the ritual of reunion over a bowl of tangyuan (glutinous rice balls served in sweet broth), entrusting their hopes for the year ahead to the glow of a lantern. The 15th night, this year falling on March 3, is at once a ceremonial finale and a quiet return to everyday life. From February 28 to March 3, Prada staged the “Prada Fire Horse Fair” at Rong Zhai — the brand’s restored 1918 heritage villa on West Nanjing Road in Shanghai’s Jing’an district. Set within the villa’s garden, the fair wove classic festive customs into a contemporary format — with lantern viewing, riddle guessing and traditional fair games among the activities on offer. As visitors moved through the grounds, the atmosphere of the New Year unfolded gradually. Mi Shang Prada Rong Zhai, the brand’s in-house restaurant that opened at the villa in March 2025, added a culinary dimension, presenting dishes, desserts and drinks rooted in festive tradition and reinterpreted with a contemporary touch. From visual device to lived experience: Prada’s cross-season China playbook Prada’s New Year strategy did not hinge on a single holiday moment. Through a combination of temporal extension and spatial progression, one campaign expanded into a months-long narrative spanning multiple cities and an entire quarter. The approach prolonged the brand’s emotional connection with consumers while deepening its cultural engagement — shifting its presence from a communications event to a lived experience. In doing so, Prada put forward a more considered model for long-term storytelling within the Chinese New Year context. Built around the once-in-sixty-years Year of the Fire Horse, Prada launched a cross-season campaign anchored by a single visual device: the “Prada Triangle Fire Horse,” a geometric red horse character shaped around the brand’s iconic triangle logo. The motif anchored campaign imagery featuring ambassadors Yang Mi — the Chinese actress appointed as brand ambassador in December 2025 — and Ma Long, the Chinese table tennis player and multiple Olympic champion. From there, it carried through a sequence of physical installations and spatial interventions running from January to March. From spectacle to sentiment: Prada’s Lantern Festival finale From January 22, monolithic Fire Horse sculptures appeared successively at Shanghai IFC Mall, Prada Rong Zhai and Chengdu IFS Mall, their physical presence drawing foot traffic across two cities. At Rong Zhai, the exterior façade was transformed into a projection canvas, with the animated Prada Triangle Fire Horse illuminating the villa’s facade through February 14. The campaign’s narrative then culminated in the Lantern Festival fair. Moving from light to experience, and from spectacle to sentiment, the cross-season story found its conclusion in the lantern-lit garden of Rong Zhai. More than extending a marketing cycle, Prada recalibrated its role within the holiday season. Rather than appearing briefly at the New Year peak, the brand positioned itself as a consistent presence across the full emotional arc of the celebration — from the first day of Spring Festival through to the Lantern Festival’s close. At a time when consumer attention spans grow ever shorter, the willingness to build slowly and sustain engagement over time may represent one of the more compelling strategic arguments for long-termism among luxury houses operating in China today.

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How Prada preserves the festive spirit with its Fire Horse Fair