Balenciaga and Gucci merge again in a 'deepfake' spring-summer 2022 collection

FashionThe digital parade imagined by Demna Gvasalia for Balenciaga has included a 'hack' to Gucci, just as it happened in the proposal of the Italian house

By María José Pérez Méndez

Mentioning the two firms almost as a whole, Balenciaga and Gucci, is something that seemed to be the result of something unique, something unrepeatable: Gucci's Aria collection. In it, Alessandro Michele said to include in his proposal "the non-conformist rigor of Demna Gvasalia", an idea materialized in numerous looks that not only included the Balenciaga logo, but were directly designs that Gvasalia designed for his first parade at the head of the firm. . The fashion dialogue (embodied, in fact, in a conversation broadcast on Instagram Stories by the Italians) did not want to be classified as a collaboration, but as a kind of hack that honors the creative laboratory that both Michele and Gvasalia have erected in the interior of the brands that both lead. Now, this particular conversation has been taken up again in Balenciaga's spring-summer 2022 collection, which stands out (among other things) for being a deepfake of a show and for including more than literal nods to Gucci.

The first thing has been clarified by the creative director himself in a telephone conversation with Sarah Mower for Vogue.com: “It is a deepfake of a parade. What we see online is not what it is. What is real and what is fake? The reflection was followed, yes, by the clarification that "the garments are real, they were made", a pertinent note taking into account the enormous commitment to digital presentations that Balenciaga is making, among which are included (for example) a video game with avatars dressed in the collection. What were those real garments like inserted in an environment created based on machine learning and 3D modeling? With the now usual stamp of Gvasalia for Balenciaga: oversized lines in both shirt dresses and blazers with prominent shoulder pads, with some slightly deconstructed patterns and with the usual casual dose that cargo pants, XL jeans and sweatshirts with Y without a hood, a category in which one with a Simpsons print stands out (dressed with pieces from the brand, of course). But apart from these pieces and the down coats that have also been a constant in the Georgian's trajectory for the house, the public's attention focus has quickly been placed on the bags that look like Gucci but are something else: they are , in a way, from Balenciaga and Gucci.

Following the same process as a few months ago, this time it has been Gvasalia who has recovered the silhouettes of several Gucci bags to transform them: instead of the double G, the print contains a double B, keeping the rest of the classic characteristics unchanged. So much so that you have to sharpen your eyes to perceive the consonant change and not fall into the mistake of thinking that the Gucci bags have slipped into the parade without further ado. And perhaps that is why one of the models has been painted with a more than clear phrase: “This is not a Gucci bag”. Beyond the literal, references to Magritte's work The Treason of Images, from 1929, can be seen here, in which under the image of a pipe can be read a forceful "This is not a pipe", in an old reflection on the real and the unreal and how concepts can be diluted (or not) when speaking of representations instead of real objects. A complex concept that yes, is easily detectable in the conception of the Balenciaga parade.

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Those bags, without being from Gucci, are real in the physical sense of the term, just like the scarves and even the cap that have followed in its wake, changing the letters to give rise to a new print that, in addition, rethinks pillars fundamentals of branding understood as it has been up to now; identifiable conception in the looks that make up the cast of logomania for this fall. "Alessandro and I are very different," explained Gvasalia. "But we both like to question things like branding and appropriation... Because everyone does it, whether they say it or not."

Thus, this start of honesty that synthesizes the new duo that should not be lost sight of (with the permission of Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons), continues to outline a new narrative in the fashion industry, one that finally reflects the current hyperconnectivity and how creative ideas are increasingly liquid and are enriched thanks to the vision of the other.

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