A new short film by Maison Margiela ‘Reality Inverse’ is a mind-bending, chaotic mashup of iridescent flashes with themes of artifice, decay and over-stimulation.

Reality Inverse puts the ethos of the house’s recent collections on blast. The film is a visual conversation between creative director John Galliano and photographer Nick Knight. Bright and brash, model Duckie Thot moves in a mirrored reality to music with vocals provided by Roy Orbison, all masterminded under the artistic eye of famed photographer Nick Knight.

The film appears at first as a stressed jumble – high fashion rendered as digital error. Clips play with no obvious order or sense, reversing and changing hues to the music’s lingering pulse. Slowly, the images take form, though this stability is not as amiable as it sounds.

Images almost shake with the voltage of their colours, utilizing techniques developed by Galliano in Maison Margiela’s Artisanal collections to represent the digital age.

One of the primary themes at play in Reality Inverse is distance, both physical and emotional. Overstimulated by artificial impressions, reality degenerates into the unsettling and ultimately unreal. The film generates a longing for authenticity, for intimacy, and reducing the filters that surround us to their core.