Fashionistas at the 2018 Milan Fashion Week were treated to an unusual catwalk parade on Sunday.
Brushless motors and whirring propellers replaced svelte limbs and stark pouts as eight quadcopter drones modelled a line of Dolce & Gabbana handbags as the opening act of their show.
More than one commentator mourned the latest victims of robotics and automation in the 2018 economy.
Dolce & Gabbana replaced millennials on the runway with drones, proving no one is safe from being made obsolete by technology
— Tyler McCall (@eiffeltyler) February 25, 2018
Gucci has models walking down the runway with their heads, and Dolce & Gabbana has purses flying in on drones
I love 2018
— Cristina Marie. (@goodforthesolee) February 26, 2018
Dolce & Gabbana just had drones on the runway ‘modeling’ their handbags. It was only a matter of time before somebody developed virtual models.
— Paigey (@PandorasFox) February 27, 2018
The fashion house allegedly ruffled feathers with a 45-minute delay for the show, and forcing a 600-strong audience to turn off their WiFi-connections and hot spots ahead of the novel parade — with the wait and smartphone policing allegedly causing Vogue editor-in-chief Ana Wintour to storm out of the venue before the show began.
The bold and faintly ridiculous stunt may be part of a move to target millennials, an objective reflected in their current designs.
It certainly got people talking, and has made invited international coverage of their new designs from some distinctly unfashionable media outlets that would traditionally never cover such matters (nudge nudge, wink wink) — so perhaps Dolce & Gabbana’s strategy wasn’t such a goofy one after all.
