Artistic collaborations take fashion straight into the Age of Technology.
While artists have collaborated with fashion designers for at least a century, the multifaceted work digital artists recently created with luxury brands has stepped up the intrigue. While some of us were focused elsewhere, the first entirely digital outfit was “custom-fitted” on a blockchain bidder, luxury fashion brands started selling virtual sneakers, CGI influencers came into existence, and Gucci became the first major luxury brand to sell a non-fungible token (NFT). Balmain, Salvatore Ferragamo, Givenchy, Jimmy Choo, MCM, Fendi, CHANEL, and Marc Jacobs, among others, eventually had NFTs of their own.
Burberry even designed an exclusive accessories line for a play-to-earn video game. Fashion shows were being watched in augmented reality (AR), and brands like Burberry and Prada experimented with AR to allow customers to “try on” virtual clothes. Throngs of us even spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on high-end merchandise to wear in the metaverse, though these items are never to be touched in the physical world.
Left: Gucci Digital Art Auction Cover FOR Parallel Universes: From Future Frequencies to Gucci CosmOS (Photo courtesy of Gucci) Right: Gucci Digital Art: JOANN, “Ancora Bus” (Photo courtesy of Gucci)
Gucci took the shift as a harbinger, launching Gucci Vault Art Space with NFT art marketplace SuperRare in 2022 and describing it as “a free-dimensional space empowering contemporary artists to explore radical new ideas at the intersection between fashion, art, and technology.” Twenty-nine artists participated, and the event received worldwide attention. Now renamed Gucci Art Space, the project more recently paired with legendary auction house Christie’s for two auctions, where artists were directed to take the brand’s archival themes (the horsebit, GG logo, and bamboo handle, for example) into the future.
Left: Gucci Digital Art: Alexis Christodoulou, “The Mysteries of Nature and Art” (Photo courtesy of Gucci) Right: Gucci Digital Art: Harvey Rayner, “Eden Fresco” (Photo courtesy of Gucci)
Artists including Claire Silver, Emily Xie, William Mapan, Zach Lieberman, Botto, Helena Sarin, DRAUP, Alexis André, Alexis Christodoulou, Amy Goodchild, Harvey Rayner, Jacqui Kenny, Sasha Stiles, and Thomas Lin Pedersen yielded some wildly uncommon perspectives.
The world has always associated fashion with innovative thinking, but Gucci’s aforementioned effort highlights the luxury titan’s savviness for targeting the right audience. Other luxury brands, including Bulgari and Dior, utilize digital artist collaborations best enjoyed in the physical world. For that purpose, they call on new media artists like Los Angeles-based Refik Anadol who, in turn, establishes the DNA of his clients’ wares, pulls images, processes the dataset through an image-recognition algorithm, and then uses computed features to qualitatively filter the dataset. The result is a moving and opulent anomaly.
Gucci Digital Art: Jacqui Kenny, “Argleton Lane – Infinity” (Photo courtesy of Gucci)
In Milan last October, Anadol’s work dazzled guests with a multisensory experience at Bulgari’s launch for its emblematic Serpenti Collection. And, as an added surprise, the brand brought Anadol together with master perfumers to develop an AI-driven fragrance, Rainforest Serpenti, which permeated the installation. For a Dior J’adore exhibition last year at Paris Fashion Week, Anadol pulled over three million images of the flower species that make up the perfume’s formula and had AI reconstruct the perfume molecularly using photos.
“So what you see is not just random,” he explains. “Scent holds memories. It holds emotions. But when it connects with something visual, I think it opens up a new world. There’s some joy making the invisible visible.” He also imagined what he called a gold “liquid box” and used AI to make accompanying sound for the three-dimensional visceral experience: “So you’re hearing nature data sonification AI. We are literally witnessing AI ‘dreaming’ the formula for sound.”
Bulgari Metamorphosis installation: Refik Anadol, “Serpenti Metamorphosis” (Photo by Simone Fiorini)
Lest we get too concerned that computers might take over our favorite fashion houses altogether, Anadol says we should primarily perceive them as tools to help expand the merger of art, fashion, and technology. “AI has this potential to bring worlds that don’t exist but may exist,” he explains. “I think this is the future.” Given how many luxury brands have embraced digital artist collaborations, they are more than ready for it.
Featured Image: Gucci Digital Art: Amy Goodchild, “Convergence” (Photo courtesy of Gucci)
