There was a moment, midway through the Balenciaga show at the New York Stock Exchange in May, when the venue’s countless stock-ticker displays began to freak out, screens flashing and pixelating in time with the techno soundtrack as latex-masked models clad in satirically large business suits stomped by, never breaking stride.
Aha, I thought: Yes, truly we are living in the extended-dance-remix era of late capitalism. Everything’s breaking down—global pandemic, culture war, actual war, climate crisis, inflation, what even is crypto, anyway?—but the song keeps playing on its endless loop, and so we keep dancing to its beat.
At its best, this is what fashion does: It shows us the now. Through the lens of a collection, we see a stylized snapshot of our time—its obsessions, its dreams, its anxieties,…
