Balenciaga’s Fall Winter 2021 collection was done in the form of a video game, called “Afterworld: The Age of Tomorrow.” They sent headsets to a select few, and online, users navigated different zones — sprinkled with literary allusions like swords and stones and rabbit holes (and grunge posters shouting “T-PARTY”). Users move forward, back, and to the left and right, through keyboard keys in a slightly nauseating first-person POV, which feels more like you’re in the passenger seat on a bumpy ride.
Much like any other video game, it’s easy to be swept up by the graphics and zone into the game and have it feel like you’re really there. Balenciaga created opportunities for users to revel in escapism, curating a soundtrack and conveying some really beautiful settings — like lush and shadowy forests with Eden-esque rivers running through them, and cement boutiques. They threw in a rave (remember raves?) where users could party with Balenciaga’s sims for a moment. Others were more unsettling: alleyways with flickering lights and vast rocky structures you’d see in other quest-like games. There was a lot of imagery you’d expect from a game called the “Afterworld,” like advertisements about Earth conservation and protest posters and flying buses that transport you to other dimensions. They achieve that “you are here, you are there” effect that telepresence and virtual reality creates through the fleshed-out settings. The visuals delivered. What’s lacking, I think for me, is the creation of an environment outside their virtual one.
Even when you watch a runway show on YouTube, it doesn’t quite feel like a show. A display, maybe. But it’s more important now than ever to relay environments; people want to remember people. I want to hear the hollow echoes of footsteps and the rustling of fabric. Maybe when you interact with the models, a breeze, or warmth to convey touch. Maybe even a vibration. When you’re in their rendition of a run-down New York in the near future, a live feed of city sounds, manipulated distorted before it plays onto your speaker.
At the end of it, it was a runway show for a fall collection. It was purely a video game, and sometimes, it was just a video. This is the greatest opportunity they had as a fashion show to let the audience get to know Balenciaga and their new line. It would’ve been really cool to be able to click on pieces and learn more about them, or to exchange dialogue with the people on your screen — maybe even as a part of the challenge, like instructional exchanges. But the user interactivity is limited and ends with your screen and keyboard. There were lots of restrictions in the spaces — you couldn’t explore as freely as you wanted — and a time limit that made users keep moving.
Their goal wasn’t to create the same set up as a runway show — there weren’t endless rows of chairs or heads or any other clear reminders of other people that are excited about fashion week as you are. A nice addition to Afterworld would’ve been some sound engineering; perhaps not a live mic feed, but having someone else’s comments or shuffling translated into laggy low-def noise would’ve been a really cool and atmospheric reminder of other entities on this game with you. There’s something spiritual about sharing a moment with someone, probably a stranger, while you take in something so impressive. They didn’t have any features that would’ve allowed for that.
It was definitely interesting seeing fashion, a realm accused of being material, presented in a way that lacks materiality. The necessity of doing things remotely has pushed us into more rapid dive towards a virtual world, and Balenciaga’s hyped name has only accelerated the move. I can see more fashion powerhouses adopting this idea of the first-person runway.
a video game walkthrough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzPJ76eETnk
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