Irenebrination: Notes on Architecture, Art, Fashion, Fashion Law, Science & Technology

Parallelisms in Construction: Adrian Vs Azzedine Alaïa in "The Art of Tailoring" @ Association Azzedine Alaïa, Paris

In the history of cinema there have been costume designers who created iconic looks that cemented the image of famous actresses. Think for example about Adrian who designed strong-shouldered silhouettes for Joan Crawford in The Women that became her signature style, or Judy Garland in her blue and white gingham dress and ruby red sequined shoes in Wizard of Oz, and Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story, in a floor-length sleek white gown decorated with an Art Deco-inspired sequined motif.

Yet creating an iconic garment for the screen is the result of an almost mathematical equation, a perfect balance between knowing the story of the film and its historical context, understanding the characters you're dressing and coming up with looks that help an actor transforming into that particular character. Last but not least, you must have an extraordinary knowledge in tailoring.

Talented fashion designers do the same when they create their collections and visualize who their wearers may be and what kind of garments will make them look better. These were the rules followed by Hollywood costume designer Adrian (also known as Gilbert Adrian or Adrian Greenburg) and by the late fashion designer Azzedine Alaïa.

An exhibition currently on in Paris - "L'art du tailleur" (The Art of Tailoring; Association Azzedine Alaïa, 18, rue de la Verrerie, until 23rd June), curated by Olivier Saillard - celebrates them, juxtaposing their skills and talents and creating links between the two.

Adrian was born in 1903, in Naugatuck, Connecticut. In 1925, after training at the New York School for Fine and Applied Arts (now Parsons School of Design), he was hired as a costume designer by Cecil B. DeMille. When the latter moved to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer three years later, Adrian went with him and became chief costume designer at MGM.

Adrian designed elegant, extravagant and opulent gowns and garments for over 200 films in his career: his gowns for Norma Shearer, Jeanette MacDonald, Jean Harlow and Katharine Hepburn remain legendary, while his outfits for Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford had a great impact on women's fashion and were widely copied by the fashion industry. Adrian was known for turning actresses into goddesses and his designs were in such high demand that, when the costume designer established in 1942 his own couture design house, women responded very positively to his collections and the label became an immediate success thanks to his austere yet practical and timeless silhouettes.

Born in 1935, Alaïa studied at the Institut Supérieur des Beaux Arts in Tunis and moved to Paris in 1957. He worked briefly at Christian Dior, then moved to Guy Laroche and to Thierry Mugler. He started his own atelier in 1979 in his Rue de Bellechasse apartment and came to the attention of celebrities, supermodels and the fashion media in the '80s thanks to his knitwear garments that molded to the body of the wearer, his experimental leather designs and sculpted pieces.

Adrian was mainly a costume designer who also created collections for the fashion industry; Azzedine Alaïa was instead a fashion designer who also made some costumes for films.

Like Adrian, Alaïa was favoured by actresses and celebrities, among them modern icons like Grace Jones, Madonna and Naomi Campbell, but the exhibition is not based on this rather obvious parallelism. The main point of the event is indeed focusing on body architectures via designs from Alaïa's own archive (he was a fan of Adrian and gathered over the years the most extensive collection of suits by the costume designer).

There are indeed other and more striking correspondences between the two: Adrian designed with a modern and strong woman in mind and launched iconic shapes characterised by an architectural sobriety such as his "triangle silhouette" (broad shoulders, slim hips and skirt 15 inches from the floor) that the costume designer loved as he considered it as the most flattering shape to a woman's figure. Azzedine Alaïa admired Adrian's technical prowess, couture details and attention to revolutionary shapes and based his career on architectural sobriety and perfect garment construction.

Sharply cut and sculpted, Alaïa's pieces mold to the body of the wearer and highlight it thanks to details such as zips that spiral around the body or geometrical structures. In a way this exhibition could be considered as a journey through form-fitting designs such as power suits and perfectly crafted jackets.

Quite a few of the pieces on display call to mind Adrian's designs for Crawford and the structured jackets supported by shoulder pads perfectly dialogue with Alaïa's empowering shapes.

There is also another connection between the two artists: in 1979 one of Alaïa's couture customer, baroness Cécile de Rotschild, brought a close friend to the designer's atelier - Greta Garbo.

The actress had worn the suits of Adrian in the '40s and, at the end of the '70s, she got a pair of Alaïa's trousers and an oversize navy cashmere overcoat (that the designer ended up buying back at an auction and that it is now part of the Alaïa collection).

Masters of cut and fit Adrian and Alaïa shared an obsession for the tailoring art (Alaïa would spend hours on a garment searching for a perfection that doesn’t almost exist anymore in fashion).

Visitors who will take their time to stop and think in front of each of the ensembles on display will discover that there's more than meets the eye behind each of them. There are some exquisite details to take in, from the buttons that punctuate Adrian's silhouettes or cinch at the waist Alaïa's jackets, to the suits impeccably crafted from engineered wool fabric with Adrian's signature decorative flaps often strategically placed to create a sense of dynamism and movement.

Adrian was passionate about art and always tried to incorporate Cubism, Futurism and Surrealism in his pieces; Alaïa collected art and also collaborated with artists (remember his 1985 collection that featured the "impression compression" textile print inspired by César's compression works?). 

Last but not least, both Adrian and Azzedine Alaïa were pioneers: in Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood 1910-1969, author William J. Mann wrote about Adrian "You’re not designing what people want; you're designing what you want." Yet Adrian was so innovative that he turned what he wanted into what other people wanted, the author highlights.

The same could be said about Alaïa who preferred developing his own style rather than adapting to trends, worked according to his own rhythms and never lost his integrity even while working in the modern fashion industry, a place where the majority of designers do not lead but follow.   

Mid-Week Inspiration: Joan Crawford Wearing a Gown by Adrian

In the last two posts we looked at vintage fashion, let's continue the thread with this image, a still for the 1932 film "Letty Lynton", directed by Clarence Brown and based on the eponymous novel by Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes.

Though the film became more famous for a white cotton organdy gown with ruffled sleeves that was copied for decades by different designers, this image also features a rather striking design. 

In the picture Joan Crawford, who played Letty, looks divine in an Adrian gown and embodies 1930s glamour as she stands in front of a revolving doorway in the Art Deco style (part of the set of another film, "Grand Hotel"). The bicoloured gown was made of white crepe and decorated with black bugle beads. A minimalist motif formed a wrap tied around the hips that created a symmetry with the colours of the bodice knotted around the neck. Crawford seems to have a pensive expression maybe linked to the pains, dilemmas and struggles her character Letty goes through in the film, while the two shades employed for the gown may be a hint at the duplicity in the life of Letty, who runs away from Emile and falls in love with Jerry, but, from innocent, ends up becoming the accidental murderess of her former lover.  

As Patou Relaunches Should We Rediscover Michel Goma?

There is always a lot of talk or speculation about revamping this or that historical fashion house. The latest maison that will soon go through a relaunch is Jean Patou.

In 2018 luxury conglomerate LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton acquired a majority stake in Jean Patou from London-based Designer Parfums, a premium fragrances and beauty licensee. Simply called Patou and with former Nina Ricci creative director Guillaume Henry as artistic director, the house will present its first collection at the end of September during Paris Fashion Week.

Patou founded a first fashion house around 1912, but it wasn't very successful. Two years later he launched his eponymous maison and his house became the favourite of many actresses, among them also Jean Harlow and Louise Brooks. Considered the inventor of the tennis skirt and the first designer to popularise the cardigan, Patou also created the first-ever suntan lotion and a very popular fragrance - "Joy".

While fashion critics wonder if the luxury group will manage to work its "revamp magic" on Patou, it is worth remembering that, after the designer died in 1936, different designers took up the helm of the maison, including Marc Bohan, Karl Lagerfeld, Jean Paul Gaultier and Christian Lacroix. Among them there was also Michel Goma who has been largely forgotten.

Born in 1932 in Moncrabeau, France, Michel Goma studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Montpelier and in 1951 he moved to Paris to pursue a career in fashion. He started selling his sketches and, from 1951 to 1958, he worked for Jeanne Lafaurie and eventually purchased the company and renamed it Michel Goma.

In 1963 he closed this company and joined the house of Jean Patou as chief designer (with Jean Paul Gaultier as assistant). He designed some very popular outfits for the house where he worked until 1973, and in his career he also created Carven's ready-to-wear collections and collaborated as a freelance designer with the Japanese Isetan stores (designing wedding dresses, glasses, luggage and even cars).

In 1987 he joined the house of Balenciaga where he designed the ready-to-wear line. He remained at Balenciaga until 1992, when Melchior Thimister took over. Soon after that, Goma retired and was forgotten. Yet if you find pictures of his creations for his own house or for the other houses he designed for, you will spot a Balenciaga-like precision.

Goma was indeed into well-sculpted shapes, simple and minimalist yet elegant and refined, as proved by the images in this post.

The first one refers to a dress with a sharp low cut neckline that forms a perfect triangle, while the ingenious way the sleeves are attached to the dress traces a geometrical motif that creates the illusion of a bolero. The second image refers to a stylish fitted dress with a blouse-like back that could be matched with a short bolero jacket (see third image in this post).   

One of Goma's designs, a black evening gown with a modernist oval line created for Patou (1967-69), was showcased at the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (MFIT) in the space section of the "Expedition: Fashion from the Extreme" exhibition (2017-2018). Being characterised by a shape reminiscent to that of a rocket, the dress went pretty well with the lunar theme in this part of the event. So, while Goma wasn't an extremely well-known designer, rediscovering him would still be worth it for what regards his architectural shapes and silhouettes.  

Vintage Patterns for the Summer

There's still a month to go before Summer arrives, so there's plenty of time to get ready fashion-wise maybe with a nice project inspired by vintage patterns.

The patterns in this post (square dimension: 10 x 10 cm) refer to the two 1960 dresses in the first image: the former was designed by the Tizzoni tailoring house and it is characterised by a bustier, a draped motif around the breasts and a full skirt.

The second pattern refers instead to a less elaborate but equally nice design by Jole Veneziani, a double-skirted tunic dress with two large pockets (a Veneziani trademark). Both the dresses were cinched at the waist with a belt and were made with a brightly coloured gingham fabric, but you can choose a solid colour that fits your tastes and alter the designs according to your needs. Enjoy the vintage patterns for the Summer project!

Fighting Counterfeit Fashion (and The Threat of Legal Fakes)

Search on Google anything connected with the fashion industry fighting against counterfeits and you will get all sorts of features: some of them will provide you with percentages of seized fake products; others will maybe offer readers tips on how to spot a fake product and then there are the various articles about e-commerce giants à la Amazon or Alibaba introducing new policies to remove sellers offering counterfeit goods from their sites.

If you're a fashion company, depending on the country where you're based or your resources, you may turn to teams of expert lawyers or to tech solutions tailored on your needs such as the blockchain, that can help recognising original and fake goods.

Yet there are things that can only be discovered with proper investigations: in a previous post we looked for example at faux cashmere yarns and cashmere garments in Italy, but the Italian Guardia di Finanza (Tax Police) last week closed another interesting investigation, called Operation "Eden Brand" and revolving around counterfeit products and laundering money.

The operation was launched in October 2017 when the Rimini Tax Police started an investigation focused on a group producing and selling thousands of fake garments after registering in San Marino famous labels internationally protected by copyrights.

This is not the first time San Marino appears in investigations in conjunction with fashion or trendy brands. Trademark laws are different from country to country and, while in some places such as the USA the party that is the first to actually use the trademark is the party that enjoys the trademark rights, in other countries such as San Marino the party that is the first to file a trademark application enjoys its rights (you maintain this registration using the trademark within 5 years).

This is the same trick used by Italy-based companies to exploit popular brands such as Supreme (registered in San Marino as Supreme Italia under the name of a UK-based company called International Brand Firm Ltd. (IBF), that licences it to the Italian Trade Direct s.r.l.), a practice called "legal fake", as the brand is registered in a proper trademark office, but not by the original founders. 

Operation "Eden Brand" developed in less than a year, during this time the police discovered manufacturing, stocking and selling plants. Four entrepreneurs - among them the manager of a company based in San Marino - were arrested and the police also seized 3 companies, plus shares, houses, a boat and financial reports, while they found in five safety boxes in banks over 1,6 million euro.   

Among the 500 fake garments the police seized there were designs labelled Thrasher, Adidas, Fila, Vans, Nike, Gucci, MC Donalds, Lacoste, Supreme, Vetements, Pyrex, Rolex, Don Perignon, Balenciaga, Stan Smith, New Balance, Tommy, Dior, Nike, Levi’s, Hermés, Moet et Chandon – in a nutshell some of trendiest brands out there at the moment. The manufactured items were sold to consumers all over Italy also in proper clothing stores and boutiques, often mixed with original products.

In an intercepted call one of the entrepreneurs can be heard saying "I've earned a million euros in six months (...) I pay 7 euro for a sweat, I sell it for 34 euros and in a shop it retails for 100."  

The sold items earned the group a profit of 2 million euros in a few months; the illicit profits were then self-recycled by the company itself.   

But what's the reason behind this proliferation of fake merchandise? In a way it is encouraged by luxury firms themselves.

Many brands out there represent indeed status at the moment: most people wear a branded item because they've seen that celebrity or influencer doing the same, because they've seen it on the red carpet or on Instagram, and not because they know it is made with high quality materials. In a way the logo is more important than the quality for most of us which means that it becomes easier for counterfeiters to produce such items (how difficult it is to reproduce a T-shirt with a large logo for example?).

Besides, with production often relocated to low-cost countries, producing a fake has become easier, considering that controls on certain manufacturing and production stages may have relaxed (and it is not a secret that some suppliers manufacture more goods than those commissioned to then sell the surplus products...).

Logos can be replicated, but quality is difficult to duplicate, that should be food for thought for luxury brands. That said, the time may have come to introduce new disciplines in fashion (and fashion law) courses: teaching how to spot conterfeits and maybe looking at some of the investigations by corps like the Guardia di Finanza that may tie in with trademark laws, may help forming more professionals well-versed in copyright law and capable of spotting fakes/legal fakes.

Sunday Window Shopping: Les Liaisons Dangereuses Illustrated by George Barbier (1934)

You don't need to be rich to go window shopping and this practice can surely provide you with some instant pleasure. If you're rambling around Venice and you like books, for example, you may find something truly unique in the windows of Linea d’Acqua.

The antiquarian bookshop recently put on sale a wonderful tome, Laclos' Les Liaisons Dangereuses illustrated by George Barbier, considered as one of the masterpieces of 20th-century book illustration.

Born in Nantes in 1882, Barbier moved to Paris in the early 1900s after his studies at the local Ecole des Beaux–Arts. He soon became a versatile artist, working as a fashion illustrator, costume, set and accessory designer.

Fashion illustration is actually the art he excelled in as his work for the Gazette du Bon Ton, together with other well-known artists such as Iribe and Lepape, prove. Soon his fashion illustrations started appearing also on other magazines such as Le Jardin des dames et des modes, Modes et Manieres d'Aujourd'hui, La Ghirlande, L'Illustration, Les feuillets d'art, Femina and Vogue.

Les Liaisons Dangereuses, the story of aristocratic libertines and ex-lovers Marquise de Merteuil and Vicomte de Valmont who compete in the cruel art of seduction, is told through 20 magnificent illustrations by Barbier. The pochoir plates are characterized by lovely combinations of bright and pastel colours and clear lines.

The scenes Barbier depicted look a bit like vignettes: there are many erotic illustrations, but none of them are vulgar, they all retain instead a fairytale quality about them, also thanks to the style used to depict them, reminiscent of the pochoir plates made by Barbier between 1913 and 1925 for the Gazette du Bon Ton, the magazine edited by Lucien Vogel.

The amount of details in some of the illustrations in Les Liaisons Dangereuses and in particular the way Barbier depicted the characters' costumes and their wigs call to mind the plates the illustrator made for the almanacs Falbalas et Fanfreluches (1922-26) and Le Bonheur du Jour ou les Grâces à la Mode (1920-1924) in which he presented a sort of history of the costumes of various periods and countries, giving in this way the chance to future generations to get to know different styles.

This particular edition Les Liaisons Dangereuses - numbered, divided in two tomes and published by the French editor Le Vasseur et Cie in 1934 - is usually valued between €2,700 and €3,200, so, if you ever stumble upon it for less, (and you can afford it), you'd better buy it. .

When You Don't Even Realise You've Been Banksy-ed

Not everything you may see in the context of a huge art event such as the Venice Biennale is worth of the art label. In some cases the way a piece is showcased, the place where it is showcased or our personal tastes may for example prompt us to dislike what critics unanimously consider a fantastic work of art. In others, the problem is not the way an artwork is displayed, but the actual artwork in itself that may be too obscure, conceptual or difficult to understand and end up being filed in our memory under the "bad art" category. In the same way, it is not so rare to maybe spot much better art in rather unlikely places such as the streets. 

That's exactly what happened to passers-by two weeks ago, during the press days of the Venice Biennale, when an anonymous stall holder in a scarf and a bucket hat stopped in St Mark's Square and set up a stall with a series of nine paintings in gold frames.

The peculiarity stood in the fact that, when put one next to the other, the paintings composed a rather large puzzle-like image of a monstrous cruise ship in the Grand Canal surrounded by gondolas. Imagine a pastiche of a Canaletto painting such as "The Entrance to the Grand Canal" and a modern digital photograph of one of the huge ships docking in the canals in Venice, causing damages to its foundations, and you get the idea.

The witty title of the artwork was "Venice in Oil", a reference to the technique employed for the paintings and to the fact that the cruise ships pollute the city and its waters.

Passers-by stopped, some commented saying that it was much better than what they saw at the Biennale, others nodded in silence. Even a cat seemed interested and intently stared at the artwork.

Then two local policemen arrived and asked the stall holder to remove his artworks as he didn't have a permit. The stall holder packed up his things and went away. Shame that nobody realised they were witnessing a street performance by British street artist Banksy (was that the real Banksy in disguise?). Seven months after he Banksy-ed Sotheby by remotely shredding the "Girl with Balloon" canvas, the artist struck again in Venice.

Banksy posted the video of this peculiar Venetian adventure (he exhibited his paintings in via Garibaldi, in front of the Prigioni Vecchie and in St. Mark's Square) a few days ago on his official Instagram page, accompanied by an ironic message "Setting out my stall at the Venice Biennale. Despite being the largest and most prestigious art event in the world, for some reason I've never been invited."

It is a crime Banksy was never invited to the Biennale, but this year it was an even bigger missed opportunity considering the theme of the 58th International Art Exhibition, the ancient Chinese curse "May You Live In Interesting Times", chosen by curator Ralph Rugoff. Indeed Banksy would have been the perfect artist to represent the rather bizarre times we are already living in.    

Yet that wasn't all, Banksy also posted on his official Instagram page the picture of a graffiti that some people had already suspected as made by him. The graffiti (in San Pantalon, in the Dorsoduro area of the city) represents a migrant boy in a safety vest holding a pink flare.

Ironic and fun, controversial and bitter, Banksy's interventions in Venice were clever and poignant, hinting at the destruction of the environment and at the fragile beauty of Venice, but also at the migrant debate.

You wonder if, after his performance in the street and his mural, Banksy went back to Britain or if he stayed for a few more days in Italy. Deep down you wish he extended his art holiday and maybe left a few of his witty graffiti also as in other places and cities, maybe as messages to the current Italian far right government and to the anti-migrant fascist Minister of the Interior and Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini (there are quite a few multi-cultural schools in Italy that are going through rather difficult times with racism spreading and parents reluctant to enroll their kids in schools with high percentages of migrant children because of Salvini's aggressive messages against migrants, and maybe the number of kids enrolled in these schools would be higher if only Banksy would spread some graffiti magic on their walls...).

Shame, though, many people in the art business and most journalists missed Banksy's performance (or maybe didn't notice it?). Maybe we didn't pass near Banksy's stall, or maybe our eyes and minds were so focused on the grand Biennale that we didn't notice Banksy's bitter yet irresistible irony. You marvel, though, at the fact that Banksy turned up unannounced at the Venice Biennale and didn't even have some sort of invitation that allowed him to visit the Arsenale and the Giardini. That's bizarre if you think that during the press days everybody seems to have a press pass. Well, everybody but Banksy. 

Can Artificial Intelligence Be a Sentient Being and a Creative Artist?

In yesterday's post we looked at visualisations of data as art via an installation at the 58th International Art Exhibition in Venice.

While there are people who may still be skeptical about data being showcased in an art event, it is impossible to deny that technology is opening new paths in different creative disciplines, art included, as proved also by another installation at the Venice Biennale.

Artist Ian Cheng creates for example living environments using techniques borrowed from computer programming.

These environments feature characters and elements that have the ability to constantly mutate and transform. Cheng's environments could therefore be considered as living virtual ecosystems that start with basic properties but self-evolve little by little without the artist controlling them or without ending, a modus operandi that is generates confusion and anxiety in the viewers.

In the Central Pavilion at the Giardini there is one of these environments, "BOB (Bag of Beliefs)". The latter is a form of Artificial Intelligence, a sentient being with a personality, values and a red worm-like body in constant growth, appearing on a giant screen.

BOB develops like a neural network, moving in infinite cycles of existence and visitors can interact with or influence it via an iOS app. BOB's behavioural patterns therefore continuously transform and its reactions quickly mutate, going from the enraged to the playful. The AI will eventually understand how to balance desires, pleasures and pains with time and experience, trial and error.

Cheng's also added in the Arsenale the story of BOB in panels presented in a sort of comic book style (that will make graphic novel connoisseurs think about Jeff Smith's Bone for the fantasy environments in which BOB is placed; if you like the story you can buy Cheng's fanzine about BOB in the exhibition shop). 

The panels offer visitors a fantasy visions of a series of AI characters and gives an idea about what it is like to hang out with BOB.

Cheng's "BOB" proves that AI can be creative, but the dilemma about the results of this creative process remains open (can we indeed consider this form of art as filled with the emotions we may feel while watching a painting by a human artist?).

Last year the first painting by an Artificial Intelligence - Portrait of Edmond Belamy - created by Paris-based art collective Obvious using an algorithm and a data set of 15,000 portraits painted between the 14th and 20th centuries, was sold at Christies for $430,000, sparking the debate about AI and art.

Cheng's "BOB" invites visitors to question again what's art and what's not, but the graphic novel-like panels offering the background story to BOB, prove that AI can try and mimick art or even break free from its chain, but you will still need a human artist to provide it with a context in which it can exists. 

Can Data Visualisation Be Beautiful? Yes, It Can, Says Artist Ryoji Ikeda

In the last few years we have learnt a lot about the power and perils of data in different fields, from the communication industry to  politics and fashion as well. For modern companies (and for political parties as well...) harvesting and owning data means to have invisible assets that can help them with a variety of issues from improving the quality of a product to growing one's business or influencing consumers' (or even voters'...) behaviour.

When we think of data we conjure up in our minds strings of numbers, values and information about web traffic, social media reach, customer reviews and demographics, combinations of the billions of data bytes out there, yet we rarely imagine data as something beautiful.

The beauty of data stands indeed in the fact that, through data, we can collect an incredible amount of information in a relatively short time. But can data have an aesthetic power as well? Can data be beautiful or can they be turned into a visual story? Yes, they can, at least according to Ryoji Ikeda.

The Japanese artist and composer often combines minimal acoustic compositions with fields of digitally rendered information. Algorithms are employed in his practice to capture and reflect the world surrounding us and the results of these data visualizations can be incredibly intriguing.

One of Ikeda's data based works – "data-verse 1" (2019) – is currently on display in the Arsenale section of the 58th International Art Exhibition in Venice. The work - completing an epic cycle of works visualising large quantities of digital information - consists in a large-scale high-definition screen on which scientific data are projected.

Ikeda combined data from CERN, NASA and The Human Genome Project, coming up with mathematical compositions in which the artist mixed raw data with an auditory pattern. The resulting digital artwork invites viewers to consider the difference in scale between small particles such as data and the enormity of the universe, but also the incredible amount of data that can be elaborated in a very short time and the information processed by our brains.

Pixels and noises are used as the building block for this installation that turns data from invisible entities into visible ones, prompting us to consider how these bytes influence our lives.

The electronic music in the background adds another layer to the installation, alluding at other dimensions and reminding us that the universe of data is even more complex than we can imagine.

The data form a complex puzzle of information, almost a poem in digital verses visualised and processed by visitors. 

If you want to have a more physical rather than visual interpretation of data, head to the Giardini's Central Pavilion, here you'll find Ikeda's "spectra III" (2008/2019).

The latter consists in a corridor bathed in blinding fluorescent LED lighting tubes. The corridor is so bright that most visitors are forced to shield their eyes or focus on the ground, and that's to replicate the sensation of being immersed in an ocean of data, and being unable to process what we see, as if our senses were completed wiped-out.

Though painful to the eyes, the corridor is also a sublime experience, almost a neutral landscape from a mysterious sci-fi dimension that, with its bliding excess of light, leaves you disorented and almost sick, just like an avalanche of data would do.  

When Technology Shapes the Future of Fashion in Surprising Ways

It is not unusual to go to a runway show and get the illusion that a design on the runway comes in a particular colour or fabric, just to realise in the showroom that the lights and fast rhythms of the show may have totally deceived you.

Yet, if you thought you had seen screens perfectly integrated in a Louis Vuitton bag spotted on the Cruise 2020 runway, well, that wasn't an illusion at all. The bag - or rather its prototype - actually integrates functioning screens on its side, as shown also on the Instagram feed of Nicolas Ghesquière, artistic director of Louis Vuitton's women's collections (but last week images of the bags from the VivaTech show were a hit on Instagram).

Louis Vuitton showcased last week at VivaTechnology in Paris the "Canvas of the Future" bags: they incorporate flexible screens made with AMOLED technology (the same LED lights employed for some smartphones) and offer a 1920x1440 resolution.

Showing urban images with a futuristic flair about them reminiscent of the Blade Runner architectures, the bags seem to combine science fiction with fashion.

It took more than two years for the Louis Vuitton brand to integrate the technology of Chinese manufacturer Royole (specialized in flexible screens) into the OLED Bento and OLED Speedy bags.

Other tech novelties by the brand included the Keepall bag and LV Trainer sneakers with integrated optical fibres that allow them to change into infinite combinations of dégradé colours (seen on the menswear A/W 2019-20 runway), and the Tambour Horizon watch with new applications that allow to plan trips and even book hotels and get information about a restaurant.

Louis Vuitton also launched at VivaTech a partnership with the Snapchat network that gave visitors the chance to take away a virtual Louis Vuitton product created using a Snapcode that unlocked a digital version of the Keepall bag in augmented reality thanks to a special "Marker Technology" that transformed a 2D image into a 3D one.

Besides, during the event Louis Vuitton's Bernard Arnault awarded Vadim Rogovskiy, CEO of advanced body scanning technology for mobile devices 3DLook.com, the LVMH Innovation Award 2019, and the French maison also presented its AURA blockchain technology that will soon start controlling the company's supply. 

In October 2007, Marc Jacobs, Vuitton's artistic director at the time, took his bow at the end of the Spring 2008 show carrying a case integrating an LED screen broadcasting SpongeBob SquarePants, while on Issey Miyake's S/S 17 runway there were bags created in collaboration with Sony integrating an electronic paper panel (interwoven with leather tape) that generated seven patterns (the same technology of e-book readers), but this is the first time flexible screens are integrated in a fashion accessory. 

The themes of transformation, mutability and the future are perfectly combined in these accessories that reunite equal doses of know-how and heritage, and that seem to respond to our collective thirst for constant change.

At the same time the pieces pose some questions: the OLED bags allow indeed for infinite personalisation, as they come with versatile interfaces that interact with the rest of the world. And that's when you wonder if our bags will become advertising boards in future (will companies be able to buy ad spaces on a VIP or an influencer's bag?) or if they will integrate our Instagram feeds or maybe start casually broadcasting to the rest of the world data and images stored in our devices that should instead remain secret.

We don't know yet, but visually speaking this smartphone-bag hybrid struck a chord not just with Louis Vuitton fans, but with many tech heads out there. That said, it will be difficult for ordinary people to get one of these accessories: the first high-tech handbags to go on sale should be the optic fibres ones rather than the OLED screen bags and they will be offered to VIPs only and on order (with estimated prices going from ± €8000 for the Keepall to ± €5000 for the sneakers). So it looks like incredibly futuristic handbags will remain a distant mirage for most of us mere mortals for a long time.