How Prada turned a zodiac symbol into living momentum for the New Year

In the heart of Shanghai, animated red horses are galloping across the patinated façade of a historic mansion, illuminating the serenity of the night. The "horse" is not just digitalized as a flickering shadow cast on the wall of Rong Zhai, but also created into an installation shown in Shanghai and Chengdu, as part of Prada's 2026 Chinese New Year (CNY) campaign. As the Year of the Fire Horse, a rare Chinese zodiac year that occurs every six decades, approaches, the Italian luxury house has reimagined the image of the "fire horse" by incorporating its brand logo and ethos, naming it the "Prada Triangle Fire Horse." Amid the annual saturation of CNY luxury campaigns, Prada has once again eased into the headlines in addition to sparking a public sensation beyond fashion and luxury. A Fire Horse gallops: CNY campaign unfolds across time, space, and platforms The 2026 CNY campaign has reached a culmination in both Prada's China storytelling and its marketing history. On the one hand, the maison played on its iconic inverted isosceles triangle logo, a symbol which came into use in 1913 and quickly became synonymous with the brand identity, creating a distinctive horse that carries the logo's angular contours. Apart from the graphic precision, the house also mirrors the horse as a mirror of its core values – passion, adventure, and audacity. On the other, Prada has woven the image of the newly minted horse into a multi-sensory cultural spectacle by reifying the concept of this zodiac animal. To begin with, the exterior of Rong Zhai, the century-weathered residence Prada spent years meticulously renovating, becomes a canvas to project the moving image of the "Prada Triangle Fire Horse" from late January to mid-February. Then its outdoor garden will be repurposed into a fun fair encompassing games, rides, and refreshment trucks for the Lantern Festival. Real-life vibe lends momentum to offline retail Moreover, the "Triangle Fire Horse" is not merely a visual but also made into a physical installation at three locations across the bustling metropolis of Shanghai and Chengdu, a historic cultural hub and vibrant consumer market in southwest China. A video series traces the horse installation's 40-day journey from Shanghai IFC to Rong Zhai and onward to Chengdu IFC, with stops at each destination through early March, by the end of the Spring Festival holiday. In this way, the initiative creates a sense of "real-life vibe" (活马感) – a buzzword of the year that captures younger consumers' pushback against digital numbness in favor of tangible, real-world experiences. Furthermore, the physical presence of the Chinese cultural totem is expected to boost the brick-and-mortar economy that has been depressed for years, offering a sense of optimism for the new year. The horse character also appears alongside two Prada ambassadors – actress Yang Mi and table tennis player Ma Long – in a commercial. Besides, Rong Zhai is currently housing a floral pop-up through early February and will hold a market fair between end-February and early March – the first time it has done so for CNY despite the tradition having started in 2023 – to continue the sense of community. Online, an innovative Douyin filter challenge extends the initiative throughout the whole period, creating a layered experience for Chinese consumers. Building cultural value through multi-platform storytelling Like most luxury houses, Prada has had quite a history of CNY creatives at this time of year. However, its deeper dive to cultural storytelling is almost unmatched. Rather than treating the festival as a one-off marketing moment, it has developed CNY projects that organically align its house codes with traditional Chinese cultural references with a variety of media means. Looking back, its 2025 CNY campaign could serve as a pertinent case study. Last January, Prada introduced a podcast series titled "Year of the Snake: Conversations on Snakes," widely seen as a rare intellectual move among high-end fashion houses, especially in the Chinese-language market. It invited five guests from different arenas including history, architecture, art and film to talk about the transformation, renewal, and creation represented by the snake. Wu Hung, an art historian from the University of Chicago, began the series with an informative yet entertaining conversation delving into the zodiac animal's diverse representations from Medusa's serpentine head in Greek mythology to the conjoined deities Fuxi and Nüwa credited with creating humanity and civilization in Chinese legend. Despite only five episodes, the series drew wide attention, with audiences noting that it brought luxury closer to everyday life and created an experience they never had in from an advertisement. The unconventional advertising embraced a more nuanced format in the digital age and fostered a sense of intimacy with content intriguing today's Chinese audiences. This campaign set the stage for more ambitious, integrated CNY projects while elevating expectations among Chinese consumers for Prada. The Prada ‘methodology’: A grounded vision beyond an organic combination of brand ethos and local culture Through such initiatives as the "Year of the Snake" podcast program and the "Triangle Fire Horse" project, Prada has gone beyond the stage of experimenting with zodiac motifs to engage with their seldom explored cultural history. Zodiac has in recent years become a popular subject among Chinese consumers, especially the younger generations who are increasingly looking to recontextualize traditional elements into contemporary social moods. Traditional CNY elements, usually represented by zodiac animals, have become part of the way young Chinese consumers seek a collective memory and a shared cultural identity in this globalized era. According to the 2025 CNY consumption data of Tmall, which, together with Taobao, constitute China's largest online retail market, post-1995s placed more than half of CNY goods orders. CNY has long been battleground where luxury brands seek to engage consumers in the world’s second-largest luxury market. However, simply integrating cultural motifs into product design has proved far from sufficient. What matters more is a brand's ability to gauge social moods and translate cultural symbols into daily experiences that carry both emotional resonance and social currency. Prada's endeavor to probe deep into Chinese culture and the mindset of the Chinese people has formed a "methodology" for the luxury world. By creating a grounded real-world experience, the "Triangle Fire Horse" campaign also reveals the maison's focus on creating artistic and cultural value for the public beyond luxury consumers and therefore beyond mere commerce and capital. The Prada "methodology" – one that prioritizes cultural, humane engagement over transactional relationship – constitutes an invaluable asset in today's softening luxury market. This approach might sit behind its relative resilience in the Chinese market, where it has been an outlier with positive revenue growth amid industry headwinds. For the first nine months of 2025, the brand registered 10% growth in Asia-Pacific, with improvement in China over the third quarter. The outperformance helps explain why Prada continues to invest with confidence in the market. As its CEO Andrea Guerra noted, "We believe in the long-term [potential] of Chinese consumers and China – strongly." Straddling products, visuals, physical presence amid a range of touchpoints, Prada's CNY campaign amounts to a methodological experiment in how a global luxury house can establish an open, candid conversation with local culture. The carefully articulated "Triangle Fire Horse" functions as a thread in its storytelling for China's most important festive season. By translating a beloved cultural totem into a substantive experience that resonate with Chinese consumers both emotionally and socially, Prada renders an ingenious reinterpretation of its core values, with the horse serving as a metaphor that gallops its legacy forward into the contemporary world and the future. In doing so, the campaign not only reinforces brand prestige, but also aligns with a broader cultural impulse among the Chinese public seeking a shared memory and cultural identity. This methodology hence sets a benchmark for luxury's long game in local engagement, redefining luxury as a practice grounded in cultural literacy, heritage, and continuity rather than a fleeting sensation or commercial gain.

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How Prada turned a zodiac symbol into living momentum for the New Year