Ras Al Khor.
5 AM.

The Prada Galleria has been sitting on cutting tables, office desks and the arms of women who know exactly what they are doing since 1913. It does not need a pristine backdrop to hold its authority. We put it in a cardboard box at a vegetable market at five in the morning to prove it.

Ras Al Khor Central Market is where Dubai's restaurants get their produce before the city wakes up. The workers who move through it have been doing this longer than most brands have existed. The leather jacket Walaa is wearing, the graphic shirt Ali has on, the Galleria she is carrying — Prada's SS26 collection was built around the idea of where things come from. This market knows exactly where everything comes from.

Nobody asked us to feel awkward. Two seconds in, someone offered us a tomato. Ali tossed it in the air for a photograph. That was the shoot.