Acne Studios, the Swedish fashion house, makes US$800 (approximately RM3,482) jeans that look like something a roofer would wear to a rave. They’re coated in paint flecks, battered as a baseball mitt and burdened with enough metal trinkets that they should weigh 20-odd pounds. Except they don’t.
They aren’t covered in paint either. And those wear marks? They’re all a facade. Each splatter, splice and wear stain on the jeans is printed.
The chains and charms are a one-dimensional illusion. In the age of artificial intelligence fakery, designers are getting in on the fake news and making jeans that aren’t quite real. A long flirtation with trompe l’oeil Fashion history is a speckled battlefield of “trompe l’oeil” technique to make consumers marvel and gasp.
As far back as 1927, French couturier Elsa Schiaparelli was minting cheeky sweaters with flat, sham bows knit in them (the term “trompe l’oeil” is French for “trick the eye”). The 1990s witnessed a wave of postmodern, illusionist garments – British designer Katharine Hamnett’s jumpsuit that duped for a zoot suit, Jean Paul Gaultier’s dresses printed with images of women in bikinis and Martin Margiela’s whole collection of matte “sweaters” and “coats” printed, deviously, with photos of other garments. These designs were often conspicuous in their fakery – inviting onlookers to be in on the gag.
Take Gaultier’s trompe l’oeil jeans from 1997. The “denim” is printed smaller t.