PUTTING CYBORG FASHION IN CONTEXT

Cyborg was the title chosen by Alessandro Michele to present his Autumn / Winter 2018-19 collection for Gucci, that will forever be remembered for having several models on the runway walking with a replica of their heads under their arms. But in that show, there was a lot to be discussed because Michele himself is aware that he designed the whole collection with a literary reference in mind: the iconic A Cyborg Manifesto by Donna J Haraway. The same book that Lady Gaga was obsessed with in her Born this way feminist era.

And what does the cyborg movement have to do with feminism? Fundamentally, a cyborg is a preeminently neutral being when it comes to gender: a type of blank canvas in which hybrid human and cybernetic parts are added giving way for infinite mix&match possibilities. That’s what Michele’s collection was all about: new post-human beings, some more cyborg than others, others less so, but all of them are hybrid. However, to consider that collection by Gucci as the first one to deal with these kinds of themes would be omitting part of history.

The first one to bring cyborgs to the catwalk was Alexander McQueen. The designer not only nailed his own collection titled Cyborg, which he presented in 1998, in which models advanced much-established aesthetics like that of post-humans like Matieres Fecales or like humans with some kind of defect, which could be Die Antwoord’s Yolandi’s case. No matter how, a year later, McQueen would bring his cybernetic obsessions to Givenchy by bringing to the runway his revision of the quintessential cyborg, Pris from Blade Runner, with a collection that was crowned by silhouettes with prints of chips and futuristic LED lights.

After both collections, many others tried approaching the cyborg theme from one point of view or another. From John Galliano for Dior’s Matrix vibe in 1999 (a year touched by the grace of robotics) until the latest cybernetic hybridisations that are closer in time that, without being 100% cyborg, they do exploit that profound dialogue between man and machine, whether it be for the inexpressive models moved through the runway by a belt conveyor in Kim Jones for Dior’s latest collection, or the tunnel of projections in Demna Gvasalia’s runway show for Balenciaga, where any kind of humanity was called into question as it was taken over by Jon Rafman’s futuristic visuals.

Because cyborg fashion doesn’t consist of making models wear a razor-cut bob blonde wig nor adding metallic sheets to traditional patterns. Absolutely not. Cyborg fashion is, by definition, and keeping with Haraway’s precepts from her A Cyborg Manifesto, a fashion that explores all kinds of hybridizations and shatters the walls placed between genders, sexes… and sometimes even different styles.