The new Glen Luchford-directed campaign for the British label’s Slash Bag sees the model face-to-face with a haunting lookalike, in an ominous ode to humanity in the dizzying future of tech
Alexander McQueen’s flirtations with the boundless world of tech have permeated the British brand’s DNA for decades. Take the seminal S/S10 Plato’s Atlantis show (live-streamed on SHOWstudio, until the online traffic caused the site to crash) which opened with two imposing mechanical cameras, springing to life to survey the audience and project their image on a gigantic screen, before turning their attention to towering models in kaleidoscopic, digitally printed dresses. Launching today, Alexander McQueen’s latest campaign for The Slash Bag sees a further reimagining of fashion and art’s favourite subject: man v machine.
The new fashion film directed by Glen Luchford depicts Kaia Gerber alone in an eerie dystopian future, dressed in a sharp, slinky tailored jacket, high-slit skirt and The Slash bag on her shoulder. Marching through a futuristic cityscape through breathtaking skyscrapers and clinical rooms surveilled by cameras, she discovers a desolate white expanse. In its centre, disembodied clones haunt the model, as she identifies a replica of her own being, and weeps as she assesses its features, realising the threat of the man-made replacing man. The room darkens with the realisation she’s being watched, and the exit is nowhere in sight.
The Slash Bag campaign marks a cutting-edge turn from Alexander McQueen’s previous fashion films, which have seen models amid blustering storms in London’s cityscapes, and sodden in mud as models wallow in the Thames’ muddy waters. Toying with themes of surveillance, machine and humanity in an ominous lonely metropolis, the leather bag, decorated with the now-signature McQueen knuckle-hardware adornment and skull motif, plays accomplice in the search for truth in the dizzying future of technological innovation.