them. Multiple texts of contemporary culture present the extreme versions of man and his world, especially those which derive from the opposition to the traditional definition of humankind in relation to animals or machines, stretched between the feminine and the masculine, functioning in an unhealthy, traumatised, non-optimistic world. The inidividuals existing in a kind of convergence space, where organic tissue and technology merge, are considered to be cult – just to mention A Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Haraway or the pioneering visions of unions bewteen humans and technology in the form of Robocop, replicants from Blade Runner and Leeloo from The Fifth Element. Another direction of research is situated at the demarcation line between men and animals, explored in the context of freak shows, films such as Brotherhood of the Wolf and trillions of TV series including shape-shifters and werewolves in the leading roles. The binary form of heterosexual society, which is most fully expressed in a form of androgynous continuum, is also starting to melt down. And besides, obviously: the darker, the more mysterious and scary (or, in other words, the further-reaching, traumatic and deconstructive) the problems, the greater the power of attraction. This system of references could be expanded to infinity: from the Gothic architecture and eighteenth-century literature, the vampire films and TV series like The Walking Dead, Lady Gaga’s concerts, to the iconic collections of Alexander McQueen, Gareth Pugh or Issey Miyake. The synergy of above mentioned cultural practices induces, in turn, a feeling of decay, uncertainty, melancholy and pessimism. And additionally: the collapse of great narratives that structured reality, their deconstruction and susceptibility to recycling. Multiplication of meanings. Also in fashion. blur and rhizome
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Fashion blurs the senses which it produces. The signs generated by it are changing too fast for an interpretative machine to remain consciously able to keep up with them.2 All relate to each other, mutate, create variations. The fashion world is a rhizome, whose roots are growing in all directions 2. Ian Chambers, Maps for the Metropolis: A Possible Guide to the Present, [in:] Cultural Studies, vol. I, no. 1, January 1987: 2.