THE AGE OF IRONY

Vogue held its fifth annual runway this week, highlighting decades of Italian mastery and its contributions to fashion and the cultural arts, and it was only appropriate to hold it in the beautiful Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, designed by Giuseppe Mengoni in 1861, making it the country’s oldest shopping centre. The crosshair runway design helped emphasise the easygoing Italian lifestyle; this layout encouraged the models and celebrities to walk effortlessly, as if they were shopping in the Galleria themselves.

The show was split into five acts: The Artisanal Revolution highlights the dedicated art of handcrafted fashion and invention; The Industrial Revolution shifted gears from an atelier studio to the “rhythm of production”; Made in Italy floods the Galleria with colour and printed textiles with inspiration drawn from Italian cinema; An intermezzo celebrating the performing arts Italy has cultivated over centuries, with stunning operatic performances from the world-class Accedemia Teatro Alla Scala and a beautiful ballet led by principal dancer, Roberto Bolle.

Following the intermission, the show became questionable.

The fourth act, titled The Age of Intelligence, is described as representing “sustainable textiles respond to temperature, movement, performance, and the demands of the environment.” [Vogue, 2026] To display this was a collective of Italian Paralympians, Olympians, and world-class athletes like Volleyball Olympian Myriam Sylla, 6x Olympic medalist Arianna Fontana, Multi-faceted Paralympic athlete Veronica Yoko Plebani, and so many more, who graced the stage, celebrating not only their acheivements, but also human achievement through technology.

In the highest part of the celebrations and victory, four AI Unitree robots enter from the four runways to meet in the middle. After standing awkwardly, they were programmed to encourage the crowd to clap and celebrate… as if that wasn’t already happening with pride for these incredible athletes. This encouragement was met with mixed emotions of hesitant clapping, awkward smiles, and jeers. However, the gold medal for best reaction is a tie between Muccia Prada and Alessandro Michele, who couldn’t hide their absolute disdain for the ‘new age of intelligence’.

With this addition, after celebrating human achievement in fashion, technology, and athleticism, the team at Vogue made the show fall flat, and this stunt was not only disappointing but also took away from the whole intention of Vogue World as an idea.

Irony was the only thing I thought about after finishing the livestream. You hold your penultimate show in the country’s oldest shopping centre, during an age of mass internet consumerism with eBay as a sponsor, and then close a segment of pure human genius and form of all industries, science, sports, art and culture with Unitree and the sponsor of MetaAI and OpenAI.

The show closed with ACT V The Imagination Revolution, which forecast fashion as it “transcends place and belongs entirely to a speculative future”, romantic blank silhouettes flirted down the catwalk with feminine beauty whilst Alecia Keys sang a sensual rendition of Donna Summer’s I Feel Love, whilst 6000 paper dragonflies flutter from the glass dome of the Galleria, skilfully crafted by Jony Ive’s creative team at studio LoveFrom.

My closing opinion, however, is less ‘away with the fairies’. The show started as it always does, impressively showcasing what the featured country has to offer through the work of the world’s best designers and artists. Fitting decades of shapes, fabrics, inventions and glamour into a forty-minute snapshot. However, this year there was a new feature: collaborations with MetaAI, OpenAI and especially Unitree. You would think that Vogue had learned from the backlash over AI models featured in its print media, but with its most recent showcase, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Instead, they are leaning into the AI fashion future, and that would be a very sad, dystopian Vogue World to live in indeed.