For the #WeWearCulture initiative, Google Art & Culture created virtual reality cardboards to be customized by three creative talents who transformed it in their own way.

Fashion is the representation of what an individual wishes to be and what society imposes in a spontaneous and unconscious way. It is a cultural approach of a precise territory. Clothes hide and sublimate bodies.

Cléa Lala is very sensitive to the sociological meaning of fashion and she worked on the interesting theme of the mask. The mask is a fashion accessory but also an artistic material, just like the cardboard glasses, a new expression tool for artists, vintage item of the future. May they be a new vector of cultural messages ?

Mask is also a link between clothes, culture and art. There is a long artisanal tradition behind and very virtuous artists sublimated this discipline. Masks from Venice are of course the best exemple of the relationship between fashion and costume. Mask is therefore the perfect sum up of the exhibition « We Wear Culture ». Cléa Lala work is a true immersion into a new virtual technology but also into the culture of fashion.

1.Can you define what is the duality between reality and virtuality ? Did it change our lives ?

New technologies multiplied interfaces between us and the others. It is an invented reality that we can construct in function of our wishes. We can change what we are. But virtual reality is also a new strange tool because it breaks the borders between truth and fake.

2. Can you tell us how was to work on a new support, the cardboard? 

Paper is not a new material for me. However, the cardboard is particularly complicates because it is quite thick. The true discovery of this project has been the item itself. I can feel that virtual reality is more and more present in our lives but I did not know exactly what a cardboard is. I think this object is a little strange, it brings us in a completely different world. Are we on or off ?

3. Comment as-tu réussi à combiner ton univers avec la mode et la technologie ? How did you mix your universe with fashion and technology? 

I think my universe is already permeated of this two notions. A friend told me one day that I am like a 2.0 embroiderer. I like this definition because it combines two aspects of my work : fashion and contemporary vision.