When Alessandro Michele debuted the brand’s highly anticipated Aria collection in April that included interpretations of Balenciaga’s silhouettes—it captured the world’s attention and sparked an international media frenzy. And now, Demna Gvasalia, creative director of Balenciaga, has continued the “Gucciaga” hacking project with the launch of Spring/Summer 2022 collection, surprising the fashion crowd with a lineup of looks and pieces that feature style codes of both houses.
Titled “Clones”, Balenciaga’s new coed SS22 ready-to-wear collection is inspired by the notion of how our sense of reality is mediated through an increasingly filtered, perfected, polished, conformed, photoshopped lens in today’s digital age. To elaborate this concept, Balenciaga tapped artist Eliza Douglas (who has involved in most of the house’s recent shows and major campaigns, as well as Burberry's SS21 presentation) to model all 44 looks for women and men.
In a video directed by French visual artist Quentin Deronzier for the lineup, Douglas appears as a series of digital clones, some of which are deepfakes, or models with the artist's photogrammetry-captured and CG-scanned face digitally grafted on.
See also: Gucci "Hacked" Balenciaga For New Aria Collection and the Internet Went Wild