Technology creates alternate realities and identities, a world of digital clones.
Balenciaga’s Spring 22 presentation takes into account our shifting senses of reality through the lens of technology. We see our world through a filter—perfected, polished, conformed, photoshopped. We no longer decipher between fake and deepfake.
Digital clones, photogrammetry-captured, CG-scanned face, 3D modeling: fashion vocabulary has changed. And this is exactly what Demna Gvsalia showed on his white runway where every look in the Spring 22 collection is seen on Eliza Douglas, an artist who has either opened or closed every show and appeared in most campaigns for the past several years. The models marched down a minimalist runway to a sci-fi-inspired soundtrack composed by BFRND and an AI voiceover reciting the lyrics of “La Vie En Rose.”
While experimenting with the power and limits of technology, the show also poses a crucial question on the ideas of authenticity, counterfeiting, and appropriation within the fashion industry, which takes shape in The Hacker Project. The venture presents pieces that merge Gucci and Balenciaga House codes: conceptual interpretations of Gucci’s recognizable signatures as Balenciaga products. Overall, tailoring is deconstructed and engineered to sit off the body in various silhouettes. Trenches, coat dresses, and bombers are mostly reversible, giving the same garment two aesthetic functions.
