usually played around, not with, the face.
Suddenly that’s changing, from the Paris
houses to the streets.
For high fashion, the signal moment came
last year, when Demna Gvasalia worked
with the makeup artist Inge Grognard
to transform the faces of his spring 2020
Balenciaga models using prosthetics: a wry
comment on the excesses of the beauty
industry but also an extension of fashion’s
fleeting transformations. If you don a dress
this evening to redefine your shoulders or
your bust, why not wear false lips, too, to
redefine the face?
The ubiquity of facial-recognition tech
gives such transformations a new, defiant
edge. To alter the contours of one’s visage, to
make oneself a bit unrecognizable, is to efface
the facial fingerprint and—in fashion’s long
tradition of fantasy and disguise—begin to
close the open book. For those who quail at
the idea of going to the office with prosthetic
lips, there are now options in more tradi-
tional accessories. In 2004, the researcher
and artist Adam Harvey became alarmed by
the way club pictures were accumulating on
the web. “People would go to the big parties
and take provocative photos, and everybody
would look at them in the morning,” he says.
“I can write a script in an hour to download
all these photos and tell me which you’re in.”
He decided to focus his work on an anti-
dote: anti-recognition fashion. In time, he
invented a clutch decorated with L.E.D.
lights: When a camera flash went off, the bag
would respond with a counter-flash, washing
out the photo and making it unreadable.
More recently, he worked on a textile print,
HyperFace, which can be used as clothing
that interferes with recognition by adding
visual noise around the face.
Harvey says that the people of the future
may have a choice. They might favor con-
venience, adopting a clean-face aesthetic
to help recognition algorithms. Or they
can choose individuation and privacy, and
embrace our new age with protective deco-
ration. Surveillance is everywhere these days.
But fashion has managed to run ahead of the
new norm—and hide. @
CANDID CAMERA
from far left: Models Eniola Abioro (in a
Longchamp dress and Goldsign pants),
Ajok Madel (in Louis Vuitton), Kris Grikaite (in
Alexander McQueen), Kerolyn Soares (in a
Burberry jacket and Louis Vuitton pants), Glöer
(in Celine by Hedi Slimane), Inga (in Prada), Noah
Carlos (in Tom Ford), Jill Kortleve (in a Louis
Vuitton jacket and Boss pants), Kos (in Hermès).
In this story: hair, Shon Hyungsun Ju; makeup,
Diane Kendal. Details, see In This Issue.
326
