Revisiting Balenciaga's Clones 2022 Show: The Erosion of Reality and Agency in the Digital Age

Written by Helen Song

In their Clones Spring 2022 collection, Balenciaga leverages fashion as a medium for social commentary, forcing viewers to deconstruct conventional perceptions of reality and presence in an age where technology and social media reign pervasive in almost every aspect of our lives. The fashion house initiates this exploration by prompting us to contemplate what differentiates the “tangible and conceptual, fact and fiction, fake and deepfake” in the preamble to their presentation.

The Clones show emerges from a white abyss, a seemingly one-dimensional entryway from which the models materialize. This liminal venue best portrays the feeling of disorientation evoked by a setting devoid of soul and estranged from our reality. The first look sets the apocalyptic tone for the rest of the show; draped in an all black uniform, the model is completely obscured behind their clothing, featuring a cloak covering their face down to their hips, a midi skirt, and pointed knee-high boots.

Each model is rendered by Eliza Douglass, either featuring Douglass themself or deepfaked and CG-scanned in order to digitally clone their face onto body doubles. The audience, also suited in the same monochrome black, are methodically seated a few feet apart from another and are conceptualized through a doubly-layered unreality; all fabricated by CGI, most audience members experience the show entirely through their smartphone cameras rather than being present even within their digital state. As each version of Douglass iterates down the runway, the audience members are robotically synchronized, heads and arms swiveling in unison as they follow the models’ progression down the catwalk with their devices, intent on recording each live moment.

Immediately distinguishing itself from your typical runway show with its unconventional camera work, lyrical and sonic juxtaposition, and a setting so sterile it feels wholly divorced from anything remotely human or “real,” the show utilizes multiple dimensions to craft an ambiance of deep unease and anxiety. While most runway shows are characterized by fluid, logical cinematography which seamlessly complements one’s natural gaze as they would follow a model down the catwalk, the Clones show instead features erratic jump cuts that irregularly skip to the next model and camera angles which swoop in horizontally and spin inwards to focus on each virtual clone. In the background, an AI-generated voice chants the lyrics to La Vie en Rose, a dissonant rendition of the song’s typically rose-tinted perspective on life recited with an impassive and authoritative tone. Piano bass notes supplement this narration, seemingly pacing the models forward with each jumpcut to contribute to a jarring, disorienting atmosphere. These opposing sonic elements seem to eerily parody a dystopian future of digital environments which breed uniformity, disconnection from community, and dissociation from our own agency.

In an era where screens dominate our lives, from work and school to our often sparse free time, the online realm serves as a departure from reality.  The dwindling of third places, a sociological term which refers to a communal space other than one’s home or work that facilitates regular, spontaneous social interaction such as libraries, cafes, malls, parks, and community centers, is a phenomenon that is simultaneously being exacerbated by and contributing to a rise in digitized interactions in a type of vicious feedback loop. The internet has reduced and replaced our third spaces and even merged our first and second places (our home and workplaces, respectively), through virtual socialization with social media, remote work, home streaming and entertainment, and online shopping. The disappearance of physical spaces for unstructured social interactions and gatherings reflects a core theme from the Clones show: confronting our increasingly virtual existence that is gradually becoming more detached from reality.

The show’s aseptic setting and cold social atmosphere, portrayed by the uniform physical separation among the audience, reflects a loss of community and authentic human connection. 

Digitalization has artificially blunted how we form relationships. How much do we, especially younger populations, spend on screens consuming content versus engaging in real-life interactions? TikTok creator @maaltoks describes how our virtual realms have corroded away the natural essence of human connection—imperfect, frictional, awkward—and replaced it with cheaply smoothed forms of interactions instead.

“Friendship is hard, human connection is hard, dating is hard. There’s this inherent friction. We’re losing our risk-taking abilities. We’re losing grit. We’re losing our ability to face rejection and bounce back. Real intimate friendship requires vulnerability, and just liking and swiping doesn’t.”

Tied to a disintegration of reality by disconnecting us from being truly present in the world around us, mindless media consumption often relegates us to the backseat of our own lives. Instead, we assume a voyeuristic role, spending more time watching others engage in the activities and lives we want to partake in than actively participating in our own. But it is overly simplistic to blame only our personal shortcomings such as a lack of willpower or drive, as these virtual platforms hijack our human reward circuitry with cheap dopamine.

Essayist Sherry Ning distinguishes the importance behind pleasure and enjoyment in her Substack blog, Pluripotent, as she discusses the death of hobbies in our modern age: “Pleasure is passive and consumed, whereas enjoyment is active and created. Enjoyment demands you to participate and invest in the process of something in order for joy to be reaped.”

Enjoyment gives way to fulfillment, only obtained through sustained effort, focus, and frustration, antithetical to the superficial nature of passive consumption. Enjoyment is carefully cultivated from an individual’s immersion in something challenging, and its deliberate quality means that one must actively work and be fully present to garner its reward. If enjoyment is selective and based on how you impact your environment, pleasure is automatic and universally accessible through how the world affects you, posits social scientist Arthur Brooks.

While our digital world allows for more convenience, forging deep human connections and gaining fulfillment through what we choose to do in our free time are necessarily investments rather than hedonic indulgences. However, these investments proportionally yield high returns, contrasting with the transient gratification of scrolling and consuming—providing easy pleasure that vanishes just as fast as it was created when the perpetual stream of content is unplugged. Our digital landscapes have undermined our ability to form meaningful human interactions and actively participate in our lives rather than merely exist, subverting concepts of reality by dissociating us from our present existence and from those around us.

As Zuckerberg and Apple have introduced new technology such as the Metaverse and Apple Vision Pro, people have condemned these innovations as an dystopian imposition on real life, with comments under videos stating that we are soon to enter a “Black Mirror episode,” or witness the “end of reality as we know it.” But alienating the consequences of new technological innovations and encroaching digitized social infrastructure to some impending future diverts us from confronting these same issues in our current reality. How dire do our modern loneliness epidemic and increasing disconnection from authentic human interaction and personal agency have to become before we realize that the same “dystopia” we project into the horizon is already characterizing our present world?

This is a question that Balenciaga’s Clone’s Show urges viewers to ponder, put forth in 2021 but only increasing in relevance today. While aesthetics and apparel are inherent to fashion, brands like Balenciaga prove that fashion can push boundaries not just through wearable looks but through creating a holistic medley of audio, visuals, and cinematography, synthesizing an immersive experience to spur reflection about contemporary culture and social trends.

Check out this video for a visual perception: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2XVFT7ep6M

Works Cited

Balenciaga. (2021). Balenciaga clones spring 22 collection [Video]. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2XVFT7ep6M&ab_channel=Balenciaga

Bhat, M. (2024). people didnt actively replace camaraderie with consumption. consumption just fills the void corporations have made. In maaltoks. https://www.tiktok.com/@maaltoks/video/7346328762385976618?_r=1&_t=8kiBg3VBqXb

Cummins, E. (2020, March 4). Our screens are making us dissociate. OneZero. https://onezero.medium.com/our-digital-devices-have-sparked-a-dissociation-pandemic-46cc18ae0b5b

Danziger, P. (2024, February 9). Apple Vision Pro is sleepwalking us into our dystopian future. The Federalist. https://thefederalist.com/2024/02/09/apple-vision-pro-is-sleepwalking-us-into-our-dystopian-future/

Foster, B. (2021). Balenciaga, demna gvasalia, and a world of clones [Video]. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y2FfHAyacc&ab_channel=BlissFoster

Le, M. (2024). third places, stanley cup mania, and the epidemic of loneliness [Video]. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqjpuUJQFcM&t=31s&ab_channel=MinaLe

Ning, S. (2023, August 10). The Death of Hobbies. Pluripotent. https://www.theplurisociety.com/p/the-death-of-hobbies

Vágó, A. (2023, July 23). The premature death of hobbies - Attila Vágó. Medium. https://attilavago.medium.com/the-premature-death-of-hobbies-24d37499f329

Edited by Melanie Gubernik, Lauren Veum, Hana Razvi, Maggie Bond, and Sam Teisch.