A new wind

Is there such a thing as a new face? 

In fashion, the face has long been a prized possession, with some launching countless careers of models and auteurs alike. Throughout the 21st century, with the slow grind of the industry’s embrace of difference and people of colour, the variety of faces widened—finally. At the same time, there is a new onslaught of AI models cropping up in adverts and campaigns, crawling into magazine layouts, and inevitably presenting a looming threat to an industry that’s only just begun to evolve. 

In 2019, two professors from the University of Washington made a website called Which Face Is Real. With a fairly pedestrian UX, the user can play a game of choosing between two faces. One is a real face. The other is computer-generated using the StyleGAN generative model. The point is to challenge our assumptions of facial realism on the internet, that every face we see is in fact human, when today, more progressively, this might not be the case.

Our faces are how we’re distinguished in the world. It’s the first thing our loved ones see in the morning, the first thing we post to present ourselves online. And it’s no secret that facial recognition is the lungs of state surveillance and security. But, if the most basic identifier of a person’s identity can be reproduced, stretched, lobotomised, faked, even stolen, how will I distinguish myself and what will prove that I am, indeed, here? And that you are too? 

Shot by Umit Savaci and styled by Hanna Kelifa in London, one of the world’s most surveilled cities, this fashion story explores the faces coming up in the industry from across the Global Majority, celebrating the rise of a new presence and new beauty.

Yet, in presenting this, we also challenge you to play a game of seeing: to see these young models’ presence, not their faces. While the latter might be reproducible, the former is still inimitable. Software can’t experience the tumult of being in the world and aggregate hard enough to experience Dasein. Incapable of a real gaze (only a blank stare at best), it cannot reproduce the indignant flicker of emotion living behind the eyes. That feeling of touch that tells me looking at you, looking at them, that I am indeed here. And you are, too. 

Casting director MISCHA NOTCUTT, hair AMIDAD GIWA, make-up LAURA DOMINIQUE, set designer HALEMIAH DARWISH, production SEVENSIX, digital operator BONNY SADR, lighting assistants ROBERT PALMER, ARON TARJANI, BURAK YASAR, fashion assistants PHILLIP SMITH, EMMA GOVEY, hair assistant KRESZEND SACKEY, make-up assistant LIASUM FUNG, set assistants KASH ODEDRA, MARCO LEÓN, models SUNIRA, KERLUAL, CORRINE, ABDALLAH, ABDI, ISLA G