Fashion as Science Fiction?

In recent years, the fashion world has demonstrated an intensified engagement with projects that explore themes of futurity and futurology – a pronounced response to collective traumatic experiences such as the COVID-19 pandemic, warfare, and the multidimensional crisis encompassing ecological, political, social, and economic dimensions. This essay focuses on the work of three contemporary fashion designers, each originating from distinct cultural backgrounds and embodying diverse aesthetic sensibilities: American designer Rick Owens, French designer Marine Serre, and Japanese designer Yuima Nakazato. Together, their creative outputs exemplify three approaches to the incorporation of science fiction–inspired motifs in fashion design.

The analysis aims to explore the phenomenon of science fiction fashion as a cultural practice of “worlding,”¹ that is, the creation of imagined or alternative worlds – through garments, advertising campaigns, fashion films, and shows. These worlds reconfigure collective visions of the future and actively shape current behaviors. The central argument posits that fashion utopias and dystopias not only articulate a crisis-driven sensibility and serve as socially situated forms of critique, foregrounding contemporary challenges, but also function as creative-philosophical laboratories. Within these spaces, new solutions and their limits are tested, conditions for novel possibilities are interrogated, and the fundamental questions surrounding the essence of humanity – along with the boundaries of human and nonhuman existence – are examined.

Costume

On June 20, 2024, Rick Owens presented his men’s collection for Spring–Summer 2025 in Paris. This presentation generated immediate and considerable enthusiasm among online audiences and prompted widespread associations with the science fiction film Dune – associations sustained by the recent release of Denis Villeneuve’s second installment several months earlier.² The show opened with Tyrone Susman, Owens’s favored model, who descended the modernist staircase of the Palais de Tokyo (Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris). Susman’s appearance announced the entrance of a twenty-person ensemble dressed in cream-white garments, marching in formation of four. The procession acquired an almost epic dimension through the setting itself: the palace, constructed in the late 1930s and adorned with reliefs depicting scenes from classical mythology,³ combined with the musical accompaniment of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, created a profoundly theatrical effect.

Owens himself cites interwar cinema with biblical themes as inspiration for the collection, though he links the collection’s title, Hollywood, to Hollywood Boulevard – a location associated with all manner of social “outsiders.” In Owens’s interpretation, this designation carries exclusively positive connotations; it signifies “his people.”⁴ Furthermore, many of the models were literally “the designer’s people” – Owens’s collaborators, colleagues, and students from Parisian fashion schools. In total, more than two hundred individuals traversed the stairs and courtyard of the Palais de Tokyo during the presentation, each wearing garments created by Owens. The color – cream white – unified the various costume groupings, thereby imparting a universal character to the collection.⁵ This chromatic coherence, setting aside the cinematic grandeur of the presentation itself, likely prompted viewers’ associations with the “desert” costumes of Dune.

Costume historian Małgorzata Możdżyńska-Nawotka identifies two fundamental approaches pursued by costume designers for science fiction films:

One emphasizes technological development and the new possibilities and challenges it creates, imagining worlds of space travel, robots, cyborgs, artificial and alien intelligence. The other depicts humanity that, as a result of some cataclysm, has regressed to a more primitive, or even pre-civilizational, stage of development.⁶

Możdżyńska-Nawotka notes that in the first instance, one encounters anticipation of future fashion and technological evolution, and in the second one, references to historical, also non-Western, forms.⁷ However, cinematic narratives frequently disrupt such neatly delineated categories. Literature inspires many films, but resists such convenient divisions and interpretations even more readily. The film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune precisely illustrates this case. Although the novel was published in 1965,⁸ nearly at the zenith of the “Space Age” – a period marked by avant-garde creations by Paco Rabanne, André Courrèges, and Pierre Cardin – it contains little of the optimism and enthusiasm for the future.⁹ The universe of Dune centers on the planet Arrakis. Fierce struggles for power consume this world, the sole source in the entire cosmos of a valuable commodity: the spice melange. Its extraction from the desert sands requires advanced technology (the action unfolds in a very distant future). Moreover, those who harvest this substance face numerous perils from the planet’s massive sandworms and from its indigenous inhabitants – the Fremen, who live in ways that respect the harsh conditions of their harsh terrain.

The costume designers for both installments of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune films (2021 and 2024) – Jacqueline West and Robert Morgan¹⁰ – faced the considerable challenge of reconciling the minimalism associated with futurity with forms of dress that are almost archaic in appearance. Yet the film screen does not display the familiar repertoire of gleaming, smooth surfaces that populated visions of the future in the 1960s. There is no laboratory-like, ultramodern whiteness – nothing resembling the minimalism familiar from the television series Star Trek (and later from films), which depicts, after all, a more optimistic future. Instead, West and Morgan propose an extensive use of black, extraordinarily deep and sun-scorched, combined with the pale browns of sandstone and desert sand. This particular duality is evident at the meta-level as well: the first film focuses more on the modern and technological (black dominates), while the second emphasizes the traditional, even primordial (sandy browns predominate). This creates a highly nuanced vision of the future in both aesthetic and thematic dimensions.¹¹ In these costumes, the designers also balance the collective with the individual. Furthermore, their designs are functionally credible – they account for survival in desert conditions and deploy rich detail. Representation of the highest authority in the universe marks perhaps the sole moment when white appears on screen, in the Emperor’s costume, and a glimmer of light – in his daughter’s garment.¹² The costumes of Dune thus reflect the complexity of the imagined world. Their apparent uniformity proves illusory upon closer examination.

Apparently, those who quickly drew parallels between Dune and Owens’s presentation failed to notice this lack of uniformity in Dune’s costumes. In Owens’s show, the cohorts of models wore identical garments. Their individuation occurred primarily through the diversity of the persons presenting them – they represented different genders, races, and body types. Consequently, more than two hundred individuals displayed merely twelve distinct garment designs. Several of these garments drew on basic forms, fit the body poorly, or resembled priestly vestments (a group of models adorned with golden halos). Other bodies were tightly bound, with garments fitted snugly to the form; another group wore masks (facekini). Upon examining the information disseminated by Owens, one observes that he ensured the collection employed certified, ethically produced materials.¹³ However, Owens used no advanced technical solutions or contemporary technologies; he achieved the effect of science-fiction film costumes primarily through the styling of the models and the choreography of the presentation itself, substantially enhanced by the austere, monumental architecture and the solemn musical accompaniment of Beethoven.

Yet an ethical dimension remained central to the conception. Owens’s vision articulated a desire for peaceful coexistence among diverse individuals regardless of race or gender – a vision of human pluralism transposed from the scale of Hollywood Boulevard to the steps of the Parisian Palais de Tokyo. Owens incorporated a vast number of participants into the show – individuals who under conventional circumstances would not survive the rigorous casting protocols that determine runway eligibility (specific measurements and minimum height requirements). Owens thus envisions the future as a space where people, in their diversity, might coexist harmoniously and peacefully.¹⁴

Beyond Couture

During the same period, another designer, Yuima Nakazato, presented entirely different garments, though they were equally connected to the vision of a world without conflict. Nearly three hundred kilometers from Paris, in the coastal city of Calais, the Cité de la Dentelle et de la Mode museum opened an exhibition in July 2024 devoted to the work of this young Japanese designer. Prepared by the museum’s curatorial team and arranged chronologically, the exhibition presented ten years of Nakazato’s artistic practice. The preparations spanned three years, during which Nakazato made multiple visits to Calais, drawn to the city’s renowned lace production. The formal properties of lace itself, along with the allied concept of garment embellishment, exerted a profound emotional influence on Nakazato – particularly significant given that his mother designed jewelry, itself an ornamental accompaniment to dress.¹⁵ For Nakazato, decoration holds extraordinary importance because it is intimately connected to the concept of peace; it signifies times of tranquility. In such periods, there is no necessity to incorporate additional defensive functions into garments, no need to employ armor. Consequently, Nakazato treats lace (and employs it) as “a gesture of benevolence.” As he states: “Let us not wage war; let us wear lace. Imagine if everyone wore lace – what a vision of complete peace that would be!”¹⁶ To introduce visitors to Nakazato’s creative practice, curators Anne-Claire Laronde and Shazia Boucher selected a methodical approach, narrating his history step by step, collection by collection, from 2016 through January 2024.

Born in Tokyo in 1985, Yuima Nakazato studied fashion design in Europe at the Antwerp Academy of Fine Arts – an institution renowned for its association with experimentation and artistic inquiry thanks to its graduates, particularly the “Antwerp Six”¹⁷ and Martin Margiela. While still at the Academy, young Nakazato began synthesizing Western craft techniques and tailoring methods with those he was familiar with in Japan.¹⁸ The curators note that his debut collection of 2009 demonstrates an engagement with the social and environmental (ecological) dimensions of fashion creation¹⁹ and his interest in the relationship between body and garment, rooted in his deep immersion in Eastern cultural traditions. Nakazato articulates this preoccupation as follows: “Human bodies are dynamic and transform from day to day, but clothes are static. People continually evolve; how can we make clothes do the same? These questions formed the point of departure for my vision of fashion’s future.”²⁰ He further notes that the needle itself and the seam it produces represent both the greatest advantage of garment construction – it permits precise adjustment of clothing to the body – and its greatest vulnerability, as seams may easily rupture. How, then, might one eliminate or minimize the role of this element in garment construction? The pursuit of solutions to this and related problems constitutes the investigative foundation underlying the development of successive collections.

The first collection presented chronologically in the exhibition, titled Unknown, was conceived for the Autumn–Winter 2016 season.²¹ This collection serves as a point of departure for understanding Nakazato’s methodology and conceptual framework. His primary inspiration derived from a journey to Iceland, where he observed expansive fields of snow. Nakazato was fascinated by the phenomenon that such vast surfaces are formed, in essence, through the aggregation and union of infinitesimal snowflakes. This observation prompted him to consider whether an analogous principle might be applied to garment construction. To realize this vision, Nakazato employed Fuji photographic film titled “Hologram,” onto which he printed photographs of snow taken in Iceland. Small quadrilaterals, folded using origami techniques into three-dimensional forms, functioned as the equivalent of snowflakes. Nakazato used these individual modules to subsequently assemble to generate the garment’s silhouette. Through this process, he unified the technological and human elements into a coherent whole.

Although the concept of modules that could be assembled into larger compositions satisfied Nakazato, he did not feel that the use of photographic film had adequately addressed his creative aspirations. The module proved insufficiently flexible; it did not permit facile combination with other elements and resisted easy modification. Consequently, in the following season (Spring–Summer 2017), with the collection IGNIS AER AQUA TERRA, Nakazato advanced his methodology considerably.²² Working with his team, Nakazato developed a new system, “Type-1,” which afforded substantially greater possibilities for manipulation and granted the designer considerably greater freedom. The rectangular form – derived from the kimono silhouette – in four scales (determined through mathematical calculation) served as the point of departure. By introducing color alongside these proportional variations, the system enabled the production of numerous possible combinations, which subsequently manifested in the considerable diversity of garments comprising the collection.

Six months later, in summer 2017, Nakazato unveiled his winter collection, titled Freedom – a title that itself demonstrates that Nakazato mastered the modular assembly system (Type-1 Unit construction) with sufficient sophistication to permit intuitive application and the incorporation of novel elements. Individual rectangles in various modular scales, connected through patented fasteners (a form of snap closure), were employed not merely to join fragments of garments but also to bridge fashion history with contemporary practice and to synthesize Western and Eastern cultural traditions. To accomplish this objective, Yuima developed an almost mathematical model reminiscent of Gregor Mendel’s genetic diagrams. The invocation of genetics is not incidental; Nakazato himself identifies the DNA molecule as his inspiration – a complex structure predicated upon a simple principle of modular assembly.²³ The traditional Japanese patchwork method, Boro, from the Edo period (1603–1868), in which damaged kimonos were repaired with new textile patches, is another technique employed in this collection. The consistent application of this system produced hybrids combining Christian Dior’s classic New Look of 1947 with the bomber jacket and denim.²⁴ Having thoroughly mastered the Type-1 Unit system, Nakazato turned his attention more explicitly to the theme of upcycling. The Harmonize collection of January 2018 resulted from a collaboration with JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency).²⁵ Inspired by space exploration, Nakazato repurposed materials from space missions – spacesuits, parachutes, air cushions, and all such elements designed to protect the human body in accordance with their original function.²⁶ Naturally, Nakazato again employed the Type-1 Unit assembly method, utilizing specialized rivets, to integrate these salvaged materials into the collection.

A pivotal moment in Nakazato’s career arrived a year later when he initiated a collaboration with Spiber, a biotechnology company that had developed an innovative methodology for extracting fibers through fermentation of synthetic proteins, patented under the designation Brewed Protein. Upon meeting the company’s president, Nakazato resolved to work with textiles produced from such fibers.²⁷ Initially, quantities were limited, and their full properties remained undetermined. It soon became evident that contact with water caused the fabric to contract by 40 percent, rendering it unsuitable for conventional laundering. Nakazato’s team continued their investigations and discovered that the fabric’s shrinkage could be controlled by applying ultraviolet ink to its surface. This discovery inaugurated the technique subsequently termed “biosmocking.”²⁸ In the following year, the Cosmos collection (Spring–Summer 2020) incorporated the patented Brewed Protein fiber. As with nearly all of Nakazato’s creations, the rectangular form served as the point of departure; through appropriate treatment, it acquired three-dimensional configurations that permitted adaptation to the contours of the human body without the necessity of cutting or sewing. This approach simultaneously enabled minimizing material waste.

The figure of model Lauren Wasser, defined the collection Atlas, presented in January 2021.²⁹ A Los Angeles native with a profound affinity for nature and water, particularly ocean swimming, Wasser lost both legs following illness, thereby forfeiting this cherished capacity.³⁰ Simultaneously, her indomitable spirit resonated with the transformation and regeneration that Nakazato himself experienced during this period. Intensive experimentation with biosmocking during the pandemic laid the foundation for the entire collection. Beginning again from the rectangular form, Nakazato created soft, organic silhouettes reminiscent of waves, into which the model symbolically descends in gradual stages. In Nakazato’s philosophical framework, this constitutes “Dynamic design,” in which garments function as corporeal extensions, fostering harmony with the body over time and establishing a reciprocal adaptation.³¹

Nakazato’s jubilee tenth haute couture collection synthesized all preceding technical approaches while introducing novel elements. Sound itself – specifically, visual representations of sound waves – constituted an additional element. These waveforms were printed onto the fabric prior to its submission to the biosmocking process. During the presentation, the soundscape incorporated whale vocalizations; these acoustic signals served as the graphic prototype.³² However, it transcended superficial inspiration. For Nakazato, concern for harmonious coexistence with the natural world constitutes an essential philosophical commitment. He imposed upon himself the discipline of using recycled materials at a minimum of 30 percent for each collection.³³ Reducing the consumption of virgin raw materials is one of the most significant challenges confronting Yuima Nakazato’s design team.

In July 2022, Nakazato unveiled an aesthetically distinctive collection. He sought to create something beautiful from materials conventionally regarded as industrial waste. The collection drew inspiration from the numerous shades of blue found across the planet Earth. Nakazato constructed the garments from materials of negligible commercial value: damaged fabrics bearing manufacturing defects that could not be sold or were destined for recycling; surplus materials; and unfulfilled orders. The designer employed previously developed techniques – biosmocking, the traditional Japanese shibori method, and indigo dye as an alternative to synthetic petroleum-derived colorants.³⁴

The garments from the most recent season (Spring–Summer 2024) comprised a distinctive epilogue to the Calais Museum exhibition, whose rhythm was set by successive haute couture collections. Utakata – a Japanese term denoting the ephemeral – served as the conceptual key to understanding the collection.³⁵ This time, Nakazato upcycled military-associated textiles and garments, including uniforms. Through refined techniques, Nakazato created new garments stripped of their military context. Large-scale ceramic jewelry forms adorned the clothing. Though these ornaments might evoke associations with armor, their primary function was adornment rather than protection.

Nakazato’s approach to design thus possesses an emphatically humanistic dimension. His characteristic focus on the garment – a distinctive restraint and economy of means – was equally evident in the exhibition itself, in its deliberately subdued and austere aesthetic. It bore no resemblance to exhibitions mounted by the major fashion houses. Rather than seducing the viewer, the exhibition demanded concentrated attention and intellectual engagement; also, literally, visitors were required to travel beyond the fashion world’s center, Paris. This restraint naturally accorded with Nakazato’s practice, which privileges tradition and meticulous detail. Appreciating the exceptional character of Nakazato’s garments demands intellectual engagement; a cursory glance at a runway photograph is insufficient. Therefore, it should occasion no surprise that this extraordinarily thoughtful and expansive vision of fashion has not penetrated mass audiences. Conversely, Nakazato appears indifferent to such broader reception; he works according to his own temporal rhythm, operating almost exclusively within the parameters established by haute couture, a circumstance that ensures his garments remain known primarily to connoisseurs.

Fashion and the Postapocalyptic Imaginary

The resonances with the distinctive visual language Denis Villeneuve established in his rendition of Dune are evident not only in Rick Owens’s aforementioned collection. They also emerge distinctly in the work of Marine Serre, a French designer who debuted with her thesis collection, Radical Call for Love, and was awarded the prestigious LVMH Prize in 2017. Since that moment, Serre – colloquially termed the “wild child of Paris”³⁶ – has consistently developed her fashion brand, characterized by: sportive, futuristic aesthetics; a distinctive crescent moon motif (evoking associations with both Islamic culture and femininity); the synthesis of innovation with recycling; the dissolution of boundaries between ready-to-wear, haute couture, haute couture tailoring, and sportswear; and the exploration of themes including apocalypse, transformation, interconnection, tribalism, and eco-futurism.

The Mind Mélange Motor collection (Autumn–Winter 2020), loosely inspired by Frank Herbert’s Dune, coincided with the promotional campaign for the forthcoming premiere of Denis Villeneuve’s film adaptation³⁷ and presented a dystopian universe wherein

humans have spread out over a series of inter-connected, life supporting planets. Their styles are way beyond what we know today – their knowledge has evolved, their ability to comprehend has enlarged. They are able to travel between worlds, using a mysterious Mélange,³⁸

which here signifies the capacity for creative synthesis of disparate elements and absorption of boundless possibilities. The collection constitutes a sophisticated admixture of styles uniting the antique with the contemporary and futuristic. The pristine elegance of garments constructed from recycled white embroidered tablecloths and pillowcases contrasts sharply with animal-print jackets fashioned from artificial bedding covers and black cocoon-like hoods (termed by Serre “Reverend Sister hoods,” in honor of a Dune character). That is paired with incandescent fuchsia dresses produced from blended recycled textiles that signal floral proliferation and hope for futurity. Accompanied by checked suits and face-covering bodysuits, Serre’s proposals constitute the vestments of tomorrow – FutureWear – armor with which to confront the unknown precipitated by climatic transformation. Notwithstanding the collection’s dystopian landscapes of depopulated territories and rather somber Dune quotations adorning the show invitations, observers discerned an underlying optimism in Serre’s vision: “The world may be heading toward a dark future, but through this collection Serre proved that her future is bright”;³⁹ “Yet Serre’s show struck a surprisingly, perhaps even perversely, optimistic tone, aided in small measure by a handful of children. Perhaps this is what occurs when one fully confronts one’s fears.”⁴⁰

Dystopian narratives and postapocalyptic worlds constitute the thematic preoccupation not merely of this collection but of numerous others in Serre’s oeuvre, which function as a continuous commentary on climatic transformation, its attendant catastrophes, and the fashion industry’s complicity in these processes. Through her designs and their presentation on runways, in fashion films, photographs, and promotional materials, Serre “does not so much predict apocalypse as experience[s] it,”⁴¹ while simultaneously inviting audiences to acknowledge the manifold crises and apocalyptic events occurring within lived reality. The theme of apocalypse figures prominently in Serre’s 2019 collections: the Spring–Summer Hardcore Couture and the Autumn–Winter Radiation. A series of short films titled Planet B accompanied the presentation of the former, conducting viewers through “dystopian landscapes that hybridize technology and nature, embodying the hardcore, multiverse culture-nature of PLANET B.”⁴² Serre further explored the synthesis of nature and culture within postapocalyptic reality in the Radiation collection, presented during a show situated deep beneath the streets of Paris. In dark, winding tunnels resembling a bunker, models sought refuge, parading in the brand’s characteristic protective FutureWear: bodysuits fashioned from Lycra that adhere to the body like a second skin, face masks, and accessories constructed from computer chips, shells, and coins – artifacts of futurity. As the event description articulates:

Ecological crises and climate wars are destroying the last remains of civilization as we know it. However, small numbers of survivors are finding refuge in shelters and caves deep underground. Tiny branches of rather peculiar people are birthing communities of an entirely new kind. Here something is brewing, fermenting, yeasting, radiating. Shiny puffed jackets, fluorescent yellow uniforms, ponchos made of bedcovers and hanging hybrid robes are mixed with balaclavas, psychedelic velvet, and dresses from garbage. The jewellery coalesces driftwood and shells with valuables from the trash-heaps of history: microchips, glistering metals and old coins. In an explosion of green, pink and grey silver, the artificial dividing line between nature and culture collapses, and the arrival of a new being is foretold. The future has begun.⁴³

The subsequent film Radiation,⁴⁴ resulting from a collaboration between Serre, Rick Farina, and Claire Cochran – a creative duo specializing in technological art and the rendering of speculative futures within video game environments – examines planetary devastation through a hybrid utopia–dystopia. A digitally rendered avatar, attired in Marine Serre garments, traverses Parisian streets suffused with toxic smog while encountering other survivors of the apocalypse. According to Serre,

In Radiation, everything has re-started – not a lot is left of the old world. A new community of people is emerging. Nature and culture has become indistinguishable, new rituals of life appear, people are transforming into something else and changing forms, and boundaries are fluid. You will feel like you are entering a virtual world, but it’s not so far from the way we could be living very soon.⁴⁵

The journey through a world devastated by climatic warfare and the exploration of a wardrobe designed to confront postapocalyptic conditions continued in the French designer’s subsequent collection, Marée Noire (Black Tide).⁴⁶ The presentation of this Spring–Summer 2020 collection took place on a runway lined with black PVC at the Auteuil racetrack, beneath a low, grey sky, during rainfall, before an audience seated upon silver piping beneath black umbrellas bearing Serre’s characteristic crescent moon motif. The presentation depicted four tribes surviving the apocalypse, which “emerge from their shelters, achieving self-awareness, upon the wasteland of petroleum and water abandoned by their predecessors,” and “adapt and codify their futuristic-shamanic styles and their transformative themes to engender several clans across generations, species, and genders. (…) Transformation forward, to the next stratagem – mechanical or biological: unclear, as is the distinction itself.”⁴⁷ This narrative was further explored in a CGI film (produced in collaboration with Farina and Cochran again), comprising four chapters – Eden, Drought, Rupture, and Passage. It concludes with a scene of “arid dunes awaiting liberation,” anticipating the previously discussed Mind Mélange Motor collection.⁴⁸ The deployment of computer-generated imagery gave Serre greater freedom to represent movement, transformation, and the hybridization of the depicted figures. It allowed Serre to embody one of her primary thematic preoccupations: the dissolution of boundaries between artificiality and naturalism. It further enabled the creation of a narrative that allowed audiences to experience her garments in a more intimate way.⁴⁹

The apocalyptic imagery and dystopian, tribal, and futuristic themes characterizing Marine Serre’s work achieved their fullest expression in the film, presenting (instead of a fashion show) the Amor Fati collection for Spring–Summer 2021.⁵⁰ This short film – produced in collaboration with directors Sacha Barbin and Ryan Doubiage, and composer Pierre Rousseau – depicts an astral journey undertaken by two fluidly mutating humanoid entities traversing three distinct, simultaneously existing worlds – aquatic, mountainous, and clinical (a sterile laboratory). These worlds are inhabited by “a series of closely interconnected clans bearing witness to their rites of passage.”⁵¹ The imagined worlds are sterile, cold, and menacing upon initial encounter: tentacles are emerging from the earth to ensnare humans, surgeons perform medical procedures unrelated to healing, or living hooks extend from fingertips to pierce eyeballs. The fiction created by Serre operates along a cyclical temporal axis from which there is no escape. Thereby, it constitutes what certain commentators characterize as a “science fiction nightmare,” displacing the boundary of “apocalypse” into the register of “horror.”⁵² In Serre’s conception, destiny forms the central axis of the collection; individual agency cannot alter it. Garments function as symbolic objects accompanying transformation and as protective instruments thanks to which “despite feelings of danger, care, seduction, and vulnerability, the two chameleonic figures take a leap of faith into the unknown: AMOR FATI”.⁵³ Although the vision presented in the film may appear despairing, the garments themselves – designed for an uncertain future and presenting emphatic formal statements – possess considerable energy.

Beyond the aforementioned science fiction film, Serre subsequently promoted the Amor Fati collection through a series of brief monochromatic images (animated and static), produced in collaboration with London-based photographer Mark Hibbert. These images address the question of daily rituals and minor pleasures that afford comfort and peace of mind during crisis-ridden epochs, times during which one must hold oneself more firmly.⁵⁴ This thematic preoccupation continued through Serre’s subsequent post-pandemic collections, including: Core (Autumn–Winter 2021), Fichu Pour Fichu (Spring–Summer 2022), State of Soul (Spring–Summer 2023), and Ground Control (Autumn–Winter 2024). They emphasize the significance of connection with others and the celebration of the quotidian. Although these collections demonstrate a transition toward a more pragmatic approach by a designer increasingly establishing her position within the fashion industry, what remains foundational to Serre’s creative practice is: her commitment to the creation of imagined worlds, the construction of garments from reclaimed materials, concern for planetary sustainability, adherence to functional criteria for clothing, the protection and empowerment of wearers, and the provision of solutions enabling individuals to navigate evolving circumstances.

Serre’s work encompasses both material objects and transmedia forms – fashion shows, press communications, invitations, campaign imagery, fashion films, and social media posts. One may understand it as exemplifying the science fiction practice of world-building, world-making, or worlding – the creation of fictional, alternative realities for the purposes of designing for present and future conditions.⁵⁵ Serre’s projects appear to enact both narrative strategies described by theorist Dan Hassler-Forest as characteristic of worlding practice. First, the absence of narrative closure – Serre’s fashion film narratives extend across successive collections and constitute sequences of interconnected narratives; and second, the process of immersion – the submersion of the viewer within the fictional world of representation, which Serre achieves principally through engaging fashion films utilizing digital gaming technologies and image synthesis.

Conclusion

The analysis of the work of such divergent creators as American designer Rick Owens, French designer Marine Serre, and Japanese designer Yuima Nakazato permits a reconceptualization of science fiction fashion itself. One can see it as a distinctive practice of generating imagined worlds and alternative realities – as testimonies to crisis-driven sensibility, as instruments for processing collective traumas, as tools for critical analysis of reality, and as forms of imagination that permit investigation of the conditions of possibility and experimentation with novel solutions.

A shared characteristic of the examples presented throughout this essay is the peaceable nature of the imagined futures they articulate, along with the intimate connections, indeed the interpenetration, between the natural and cultural worlds – the human and non-human, the organic and the artificially produced. They also share a fundamentally utopian character, insofar as they propose imagined yet affirmative images and narratives through which present reality may be re-envisioned and transformed toward a desired futurity.

Owens’s project emerges as an example of an inclusive utopia, depicting a harmonious, civilized, luminous world of coexisting tribes constituting a “white satin army of love,” beneath a banner of unity. It is anchored within a designated space (a deliberately organized, though imagined, Hollywood, as the collection title itself indicates) and a temporal register (futuristic and ritualistic elements implying both a distant future and a remote past). Its objective constitutes a socially situated critical stance against the contemporary fashion system, a position enabling the articulation of the hopes and longings of those excluded from its structures – the “outsiders.”

By contrast, Serre’s proposition constitutes a dystopia-utopia, synthesizing both forms of social imagination. Her postapocalyptic representations of survivor tribes who manage to endure following a global catastrophe, thanks to practical yet stylistically distinctive FutureWear, function simultaneously as testimony to crisis-driven sensibility and as a cautionary narrative regarding the consequences of poorly conceived, inequitable, and imbalanced solutions upon which contemporary civilization depends. Concurrently, one may understand Serre’s transmedia projects as exemplifying eco-futuristic feminist utopian worlding, which present the postapocalypse as an impetus for survival through mutation, engendering convergence among nature, culture, and technology.

Serre shares with Owens a vision of futurity as a world of tribes possessing distinct visual distinguishing features, coupled with intra-tribal sartorial similarity; yet, Serre’s deployment of science fiction transcends the purely “costume” dimension. The presence of this tribalistic phantasm opens, on the one hand, the prospect of dismantling extant hierarchies and social stratifications. On the other hand, however, it testifies – through newly activated processes of social formatting – to the persistence of fashion’s imagining as an instrument balancing the simultaneous desire for differentiation and similarity to others, as well as the impossibility of imagining fashion functioning within an environment free from social divisions.

Serre’s work shares with Nakazato’s projects a concentration upon nature-friendly technologies and a vision of fashion’s future as a circular system. However, Nakazato develops the ecological utopia more maturely and consistently in his haute couture creations, whose organizing themes encompass cosmos, futurism, and human existence. Their futuristic character manifests not through stylization but through the development of production technology itself and operation within a closed-loop system. Nakazato’s practice functions primarily as a fashion laboratory of possibility and imagination, which tests the limits of synthesizing nature, culture, and technology – with reverence for all forms of life, seeking equilibrium between interior and exterior reality, and reflecting upon the essence of humanity and the boundaries of human existence. Similarly to Owens, Nakazato’s projects attempt to minimize gender differentiation in dress, but in entirely different ways. In Nakazato’s work, drawing upon his own cultural heritage, garments dynamically adjust to the body in accordance with his philosophy of dynamic design, whereas Owens orchestrates conditions wherein his clients, on principles of universalism, might themselves determine what suits them, unencumbered by social constraint.

In conclusion, it merits emphasis that the ideas and visions of futurity articulated by these three designers, while aligned in their conception of peaceful and utopian futures, nonetheless exercise different degrees of cultural influence – a disparity not necessarily determined by the garments they propose. The analysis of the foregoing examples reveals that imagery – particularly cinematic science fiction – constitutes the most readily disseminated mode of cultural transmission, as it operates through associations and collective imaginings concerning the appearance of future dress. Consequently, the films directed by Denis Villeneuve remain the most potent points of reference for the analyzed examples. The imagery produced by Marine Serre likewise maintains considerable prominence. Owens, in preparing a fashion show executed with cinematic grandeur, permits the collection itself to generate and disseminate the images. By contrast, Nakazato concentrates almost exclusively on the creation of garments for futurity. However, their cultural impact, owing to the absence of accompanying distinctive imagery, remains comparatively modest.