28 November 2022 |
With a sudden start and the blink of an auburn eye, we enter into a dystopian world. Airbound automobiles soar beside brutalist skyscrapers, blurred by a blanket of amber-hued photochemical smog. In an instant the frame cuts to Kaia Gerber, stomping along a concrete post-modern veranda. Her posture is harsh like the architecture around her, her gestures, gentle as she goes on to descend an industrialist spiral staircase. Thrown over her shoulder is a crimson edition of the Alexander McQueen Slash Bag, a stellar new member to the brand’s growing bag family with McQueen’s quintessential knuckle hardware and skull motifs. Over her feminine form, she wears a sharp, tailor blazer and a seductive black dress, but still the Slash bag’s sumptuous quality is brought to the surface and spotlighted amid the post-societal landscape.
Through an automatic door, she happens upon an eerie alabaster room. It feels unfinished – like the outermost edges of the universe. To the model’s right are a lineup of ominous cyborg mannequins on alloy stands that calmly evoke the uncanny valley. Gerber stops at the last Ex Machina-like figure, a carbon-copy of her own likeness. In confounded contemplation she examines the humanoid object, her expression slowly darkening and succumbing to a mosaic of raw emotions until tears stream down her rosy cheeks.
Suddenly, a drone draws her attention from the bot, but, when her gaze falls again against it, its eyes flick open. In a fast flurry of bewildering panic, Gerber flees the stark space until, into the dark, her senses disintegrate.
It’s a sublime sci-fi short film full of firsts; the first pre-collection campaign film for the London label and the first time Gerber has been captured by director Glen Luchford. Melding together profound conceptualism with subversive sensibilities, the juxtaposition between humanity and technology is explored, synthesised in a fictionalised future that perhaps isn’t all that far off. The unnerving shots, interspersed with quick-cut CCTV frames, bring to mind meta-narratives of surveillance and perception – the Big Brother of it all.
Film and stills by Glen Luchford.
