The traditional structure of the fashion spread finds itself shattered in these pages. The casting, the styling, and the photo set are all disconnected elements juxtaposed over an aseptic background of pure reflection. Polaroids depict the models, of whom we see a face or half-length at best, natural, captured sans staging. Items are not worn but arranged on a white page, spread across a virtual plane. A link frames each product — an inquiry into the dominion of the e-commerce.
Sets remain bare, ready to frame an outfit, a person, or an idea that we’ll never see, if not in our imagination. From the Futurist aesthetic, stripped of its ideological weight, comes the destruction of syntax and an explosion of the structure holding things together — the detonation that preludes a desire for freedom, to sacrifice the past and every romantic sensibility in the name of speed, of the new that advances. From the Dadaist aesthetic, formality is overcome and artistic intent is renounced — the traditional fashion spread and its stylistic features are frozen in a space relegated to the past. The dictionary is opened to a page at random and words are read, doing nothing alone to recount a story or imply a system: Dada. The aesthetics of Futurism and Dada meet on the threshold of a new future whose alphabet we have yet to learn. The digital dictionary of the e-commerce progresses by reducing the ecological footprint of stores and companies, closing shop windows, shedding jobs. In the (post) pandemic luxury market, the sales assistant is replaced with the artificial intelligence of search engines. Everything that is body, language, contact — in a word, connection — is subjected to a dematerialization whose boundaries aren’t perceived. It’s an inquiry that unfurls with unresolved questions. What fate lies ahead for the physical retail space in a post-pandemic era, and what does the future hold for our relationships? To what extent might the future resemble a return to normality?