Giving Thanks to Forward Moving Fashion
Fashion never sleeps, babe. While much of the world came to a complete halt over the past two years, designers and creatives never stopped. Without skipping a single beat, many of the most influential houses continued to thrive without the crowds and looked to the future. With in-person shows resuming and the world coming alive again, that future is now. From Gucci to DressX, fashion is on the move.
Image Courtesy: The New York Times
BALENCIAGA AND GVASALIA
Balenciaga cemented itself as a force for innovation with its Spring 2022 show at Paris Fashion Week last month. Transforming the traditional fashion show into an extravagant fashion experience, Demna Gvasalia, creative director, has merged pop culture and the often exclusive high fashion world. In this way, theatricality is the name of the game, a la 1990s Gaultier shows (see Spring Summer 1990). Balenciaga’s show started by putting attendees right into the action on a red carpet runway, the audience already inside the building viewing a livestream of the red carpet footage of those still entering. Unbeknownst to the audience, however, among the guests were models wearing the looks of the season. The event then moved forward with a viewing of a special episode of “The Simpsons” featuring Homer buying a Balenciaga dress for Marge’s birthday.
While serving as captivating amusement, this show's theatrics may also point to larger conversations in the fashion sphere, such as a pivot towards drawing on pop culture rather than ever-present elitism and exclusion, a concept highlighted by well-known figures such as Offset, Lewis Hamilton, and Elliot Page attending as models. Past this, the movie-premiere-esque environment may draw on the drowning out of fashion itself by an overwhelming media presence. It is their contribution to these conversations along with the pairing of interactive runways and multimedia presentation that excites me to see what Balenciaga has in store next.
Video Courtesy: Balenciaga via Youtube
FROM GUCCI TO BOTTEGA
Rather than pure theatricality, Gucci’s Alessandro Michele and Bottega Veneta’s Daniel Lee (Lee has since split with the house) have shown their forward direction through show location and environment. With Gucci’s Hollywood and Bottega Veneta’s Detroit shows both this year, the brands have begun to materialize Michele’s proposed rethinking of the “four-city collection” and fall and spring system. The houses have made outward growth possible, affirming a new era of creatively expanding their marketing further towards the American consumer.
DRESSX
Forget the lack of runways and red carpets, the designers of DressX take fashion past physical tangibility. This website sells digitally-designed garments by featured artists for a set price to the consumer, who then has access to the clothes and can wear them in augmented reality, or AR. Because the clothing items are sold as NFTs, the individual pieces can also be stored, traded, bought and sold to generate relatively high profits; the company is currently working on releasing a digital fashion marketplace and closet where this would all be easily and simply accessible. Co-founder Daria Shapovalova states that her goal is to “move physical clothing into digital worlds,” and just this October, DressX showed the first digital wearables to the world on live TV with Yahoo Finance. As we put the realm of tangibility behind us, who’s to say what innovations lie ahead?
Image Courtesy: Olga Helga via Dot.LA
The globe is turning again, people, and the tides are a-turnin! “The Simpsons,” Detroit, and augmented reality now all share a common connection in… couture? Considering that that list sounds like a “Cards Against Humanity” hand, I can confidently say that I am on my toes, anxiously awaiting what’s next for the world of high fashion.
Strike Out,
Writers: Quinn Healy
Editor: Jacob McLean
Gainesville