Miquela the ‘cyborg’ and handbag drones – Milan fashion week’s weird vision of the future

Meet Miquela. She is your typical social media star, with 620,000 Instagram followers and a feed full of photogenic friends, sun-dappled LA parties and selfies in which she wears Diesel hoodies and Moncler padded jackets. Her life looks so perfect – and so perfectly 2018 – that you wonder if it can be real. Well, the thing is: it isn’t.

You might have guessed as much from her saucer eyes and egg-smooth skin. Her level of visual perfection goes beyond the use of Facetune. Miquela looks like an anime Kardashian and is, apparently, entirely computer-generated. She is a digital influencer who will never demand a front-row seat. Little wonder the fashion industry has welcomed her with open arms.

Miquela was the most intriguing celebrity to “attend” the most recent batch of fashion shows in Milan. Last Wednesday night, she launched an Instagram campaign to coincide with Prada’s autumn/winter 2018 show. On social media, straplines such as “I may not be real to you but you can trust me” promoted the event, along with a series of downloadable gifs. In real life, at the brand’s art gallery, Fondazione Prada, models walked beside floor-to-ceiling windows, past an apocalyptic vista of neon signs and graffiti-emblazoned buildings, while a drone whizzed by. That drone – I find out later, when I contact her by email – was Miquela.

Source: theguardian