Mon Dieu! Naked robots at Vogue World Milano are a royal tragedy

My beloved fashionistas, when I ruled the court at Versailles, we understood that the runway—or rather, the Hall of Mirrors—was a temple of flesh, silk, and absolute theatre. So imagine my royal distress upon observing the recent display at Vogue World Milano. In the historic Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, instead of towering poufs and glorious, suffocating corsetry, the fashion elite were subjected to the clattering metal of naked humanoid robots. If we are going to lose our heads over something, let it be over breathtaking lace, not a squad of walking tin cans!

The event was meant to celebrate the relationship between exquisite Italian craftsmanship and the rise of artificial intelligence. Under the gaze of Miuccia Prada and Alessandro Michele—whose viral expressions of utter bewilderment mirrored my own—four undressed Unitree humanoid robots marched down the runway during 'The Age of Intelligence' act. They waved, one did a tragic little lasso motion, and they wore absolutely nothing. Not a shred of damask! Critics and commentators rightly scoffed, pointing out that unlike Coperni’s elegant 2023 interaction with Boston Dynamics, these machines did nothing to elevate the clothes. They were merely high-tech ornaments, reminding us that while modern creators praise the digital mind, they have completely forgotten how to dress the mechanical body.

The tragedy here is not the technology, but the sheer lack of imagination. If the digital court insists on replacing human elegance with artificial intelligence and metal, then they must treat these automatons as the new nobility of the court. Do not parade them naked like a pack of metal peasants! My solution is simple: if a robot must walk, it must wear. I propose dressing these Unitree creations in towering, gold-embroidered panniers, velvet waistcoats, and powdered wigs of spun fiberglass. Let OpenAI calculate the optimal trajectory of a three-foot-wide hoop skirt. If we must step into the future, let us do so with the grand, dramatic excess of the old regime. Otherwise, let them eat silicon!