“It’s a deep fake of a fashion show”, Demna Gvasalia said of the ultra-high-tech video of his Spring/Summer 2022 “Balenciaga Clones” collection.
The Spring/Summer 2022 collection by Demna Gvasalia for Balenciaga is a thought-provoking play on what is real and what isn’t, and where technology has completely changed our daily life.
Model-artist Eliza Douglas who usually has opened or closed Balenciaga shows, and her hyperrealistic clones, walked the runway dressed in 44 looks for women and men in a gripping, yet disquieting runway video by Quentin Deronzier.
“We no longer decipher between unedited and altered, genuine and counterfeit, tangible and conceptual, fact and fiction”. To illustrate that idea, Eliza Douglas, an artist who has either opened or closed every show and appeared in most campaigns for the past several years, was cast to wear every look in the collection. Eliza appears as a series of digital clones, some of which are deepfakes, or models with Eliza’s photogrammetry-captured and CG-scanned face digitally grafted on”, the brand explained in the show notes.
The collection showcases new shapes as well as new products from “The Hacker Project” – Balenciaga‘s conceptual interpretations of Gucci’s signature pieces. There’s a futurism at play, but the collection also honors the past and recent codes of the house – including a new take on the moto jacket and on the supersized fashions, hovering somewhere between chic glamor and punk rebellion.