LV 2020: Face Adornments
Louis Vuitton’s Men's Fall-Winter 2020 fashion show featured futuristic face plates.
Virgil Abloh presented his latest collection for Louis Vuitton at the Jardin des Tuileries in Paris today with the theme “Heaven on Earth” set in a Surrealist cloudscape. The runway was adorned by oversized tools of the trade: a ruler, hammer, needle and thread, pins, scissors, pencil, and paint brush. There was also a nod to The Truman Show (1998 film) with the cloud camouflaged staircase the models descended from.
Louis Vuitton Men’s Fall-Winter 2020 Show: Heaven on Earth. Photo: Louis Vuitton.
The whimsy and details of the collection and stage design were all gorgeous. And the metallic face plates worn by the models in the second half of the show only elevated that beauty. The rounded edges of the face adornments were almost cloud-like, mirroring the cloud motifs on the clothing, bags, monogram, and even reflecting the surrounding cloudscape painted on the walls, floor, and ceiling.
D-R-E-A-M-Y. Beautiful inspiration from Virgil Abloh and the Louis Vuitton team for a future of wearable tech that IS fashionable (See a previous post on inspiration from the Gucci Fall-Winter 2019-2020 runway here).
Will we see a Louis Vuitton face filter on Snapchat or Instagram based on the collection with a similar metallic style and shape? Louis Vuitton currently has only one official face filter on Instagram featuring League of Legends champion Qiyana’s Louis Vuitton tiara, earrings, and ring blade. Perhaps there’s one inspired by the Heaven on Earth show on the way.
“Incognito” face jewelry designs by artist Ewa Nowak.
In addition to the runway, we’re also seeing face jewelry design as a way to foil facial recognition surveillance and throw off artificially intelligent cameras.
Artist Ewa Nowak’s face jewelry prototype “Incognito” thwarts DeepFace, a facial recognition system developed by Facebook to identify human faces in digital images.
“I was just amazed how they could identify our gender, age, and mood,” Nowak explained. “But also how the development is constantly levelling up. I was surprised about how even if we have our face partially covered, how [face recognition] can still follow us and distinguish us.” Nowak’s face jewelry designs are currently works of conceptual art and not for sale.
CV Dazzle looks
Computer Vision Dazzle (CV Dazzle), developed by artist Adam Harvey in 2010, explores how fashion can be used as camouflage from face-detection technology. CV dazzle uses avant-garde hairstyling and makeup designs to keep facial-recognition algorithms from seeing a face.
In 2014, journalist Robinson Meyer took on the challenge of wearing facial dazzle for several days in his everyday life in Washington, D.C., including commuting and going to work.
Journalist Robinson Meyer wearing facial dazzle in 2014
“The very thing that makes you invisible to computers makes you glaringly obvious to other humans,” wrote Meyer. “The first thing to know about wearing the dazzle is that everyone looks at you. You can never forget you have it on. People glance at your face, their eyes lingering as you wait on escalators, pass on sidewalks, sit in museums or restaurants. It’s more than a quick double-take or turn of the head: Their eyes lock, and they stare. For a while.”
That was six years ago. Are we ready for the dazzle in 2020? With the rise of expressionistic and illusionist makeup, and AR face filters, will anti-surveillance face adornments begin to blend in and even be celebrated by popular culture as fashionable? We’re definitely inching closer to this new reality.
CV Dazzle 2013
Louis Vuitton 2020
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