On the catwalk the most advanced humanoid robot in the world, at Milan Fashion Week

Are you ever really alive before someone observes us? It is the implicit question that hovers in the first parade of Giuseppe Di Morabito: finalist in the competition Who is on next in 2015 and toInternational Woolmark Prize In 2016, the Calabrian designer inaugurated his entry into the official calendar of Milan Fashion Week with a fashion event that looks more like an existential experiment: in the center of the platform, immersed in the cold light of the screens and in the incessant reflection of the objectives, there is in fact Ameca, the most advanced humanoid robot in the world. His wonder in the face of being awake and present – scheduled yet incredibly real – becomes a show, expressing the concept of identity as a real mined field between memory and reinvention, awareness and simulation.

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In fact, the models cross the catwalk under the gaze of Ameca, who follows them with curiosity, as if he tried to decipher the meaning of shapes and volumes. Of Morabito thus builds a dialogue between past and future, where the tailoring sculpted alternates with fluid silhouettes, in a game of Historical reminiscences and futuristic accents: the corsets and crinoline evoke nineteenth -century clothes, but are recoded in sparkling mini dresses, as armor of light ready to challenge the future. The silvery armored structures seem to want to speak of protection and resilience, evoking the solemnity of the ancient statues. And then there are the roses, floweing both in the fabrics and in metal details, as traces of fragility and desire, a symbol of ephemeral beauty in a context that looks beyond time.

In the culminating moment of the show, the model Yasmin Wijnaldum approaches Ameca and imitates the movements, mirroring himself in his gestures and in its expressions. A disturbing echo that incites reflection on fashion, technology and artificial intelligence, but also fascinating because it is capable of overturning the narrative: who is imitating who? Fashion, which has always been the tool for construction of identity, is confronted here with an entity without history, which exists only in the present. His presence amplifies the meaning of the collection, which is not a celebration of the past or a surrender to the future, but a hybridization that invites to ask new questions.

What does it mean to be human in the era of machines? And how we will continue to express ours uniqueness through the codes of fashion? Giuseppe Di Morabito does not offer definitive answers, but places fashion at the center of a wider speech, in which the dress becomes an existential form of question. Ameca, with his neutral and curious gaze, observes us as we observe ourselves. Perhaps it is precisely in this exchange of looks that the future resides: an identity continuously interrogated and never completely understood.