In today’s world of uninterrupted internet access, endless scrolls and overexposure, it’s easy to have an experience or turn up to a place and feel like you’ve been there before. It’s not exactly déjà vu because, well, it’s entirely new, but with the amount of content we’re consuming daily, chances are you have been there – virtually. Runway shows no longer belong to the audience of editors in the room, but the world, to the point where – unless you’re a certified fashion freak like us – collections and seasons might begin to blur together in front of your eyes and across your For You Page. Though, truly, if you did blink during Marc Jacobs’ Fall 2023 show, held last night at the New York Public Library, at a run time of nearly three minutes, you might have missed it.
That was the point. The New York designer sent models down the runway one after the other in a show comprised of two back to back finales that left attendees turning to one another in confusion, asking, “Was that it?” Truth be told, Marc and his design team, including i-D’s editor in chief, Alastair McKimm, who styled the show, had nostalgia in mind when they began creating the collection. For a time before the internet, most certainly, and specifically for the 80s, which could be seen in the pointed shoulders, circular bustier tops, metallic minis and oversized suiting. But the aim was to look at past style signatures through a hyper modern lens – that of AI, which, as the show notes written by Open AI/ChatGPT indicate, tends to take art, cinema, culture, you name it, and transmute it into something else entirely – something repetitive, monotonous, one more thing to add to the constant stream.
We see this interpreted on the runway not only in the sped up show format, but the repetitiveness of the garments, themselves: a black bubbled mini dress evolved across four looks, but the silhouette stayed intact; a silky, white ruched dress with black floral embroidery was followed by two looks with mirroring white sheer overlay, their stitching where the previous dress might have laid. The models were also styled to look like clones of one another with matching platinum blonde, brown and the odd red scissored bob, and they wore black tights, pointed ballet flats and white socks – meticulously measured backstage to be sure they all hit just above the ankle. In the library’s marbled lobby, they blurred together as if they were the same person, in different fonts.
In continuing the tradition of the last few seasons, where Marc reworks clothes from past collections, transforming and draping them into entirely new garments, the Fall 2023 outing also continued to push the boundaries of gender and identity, even calling individuality into question. Traditionally masculine suits, impeccably tailored in a very era-specific pinstripe, were shown alongside more playful party dresses, but all done in a mostly monochromatic colour palette – save for some satin, sequins, and again, pops of red.
When all these details of the show came together, it made for a runway experience that felt slightly jarring, unsettling even. Like there was a glitch in the system. That, too, was intentional. As a designer who’s made a career out of defying convention, Marc knows that this collection will spark conversation – about the speed at which we consume information each day, and how it effects the way we perceive just about everything; about the constant churn of the fashion cycle or the many, many faults in AI. Though now he also knows that the entirety of the collection can be viewed in a single TikTok, which is… kind of genius.