The annual SHOW from the Fashion Department of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp is an unmissable tradition for many fashion lovers. And no exception was made in the turbulent year 2020. Random Studio has researched the fashion show of the future, deconstructed the mechanism of the traditional fashion show and reconstructed it in a virtual space. The 140 bachelor students exhibited their work on a virtual catwalk that came to life through a combination of technology, illustration, photos and videos, and transformed for each collection. The nine master students were given the chance to create a personalised digital world and in videocalls talked to fashion masters such as Raf Simons, Demna Gvasalia, Stephen Jones and Christian Lacroix about their collections. 

Coming up with an online version of the highly praised graduation show of the Royal Academy for Fine Arts Antwerp is no small feat. Random Studio made it work. In terms of technology and design, they are tapping into a totally new domain here. No plan B for a fashion show, but a discipline-transcending alternative. There has clearly been a strong collaboration and Random Studio pushed boundaries in it. The expert jury is charmed by the way in which the human body is represented and how it is used to display fashion. The form dominates over the students’ final pieces here and there, but at the same time this also demonstrates the wide range of possibilities offered by this layered, new domain.