MANIFESTO

#61

ART NOW

BALENCIAGA SS22

2021.06.11

Clones SS22 Collection
by MADDALENA IODICE

What’s real and what’s fake? The Hacker Project behind Demna Gvasalia and Alessandro Michele.

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.

GRASPING THE FORMLESS

2023.09.30

Issey Miyake Spring Summer 2024 collection tells of a modern, sincere woman inspired by distant, yet pure worlds and feelings.

Veiled Elegance

2023.09.29

The reflection of a new elegance takes shape in a balance between the present time and the past: silhouettes, constructions and styling inspired but adapted to the contemporary.

LOEWE

LIVE STREAMING

2023.09.29

Watch the LOEWE Spring Summer 2024 women’s runway show from Paris.

CHANEL

ETERNAL CODE

2023.09.28

A cinematic journey chronicles Chanel’s Fall Winter collection, investigates its main characters and delves into its inspirations.

LIVE STREAMING

GIVENCHY

2023.09.28

Watch the Spring Summer 2024 Womenswear show by Matthew M. Williams.