BALENCIAGA DEBUTS FALL ‘21 CAMPAIGN

by Stephen Garner

Balenciaga has launched its new fall 2021 campaign directed and produced by video game developer Quantic Dream.

Using motion capture to create animated versions of real actors, the video follows two characters that meet at a fictional facility providing temporary escapes to virtual scenarios. The protagonists wait in line for a VR headset and separately enter the controlled experience. While there, though, each cannot help but remember the other, hoping to meet up in either the digital or physical realm. The virtual world these characters enter is partially made of the intricate settings created for Afterworld: The Age of Tomorrow—a cloud-based video game that introduced Balenciaga’s fall ‘21 collection.

Fantastic landscapes and other characters enjoying the virtual experience cannot distract the protagonists from their goals of finding the person that caught their interest in line, though. Once the headsets are removed, the protagonists see one another and embrace, each of them transforming into other distinct characters to signify the uncertainty of place and identity in this realm, too.