Balenciaga Creates Functional Speaker Bags, Face Shields To Make You A Cyborg

The wonderful and wacky world of Balenciaga is bringing even more stuff fans don’t need but love to marvel at. Creative director Demna is now reinventing bags and face shields, it seems, as a bag with a speaker and a full-faced shield was spied on the runway of Balenciaga’s 51st Couture Show. 
  
The speaker bag was created in collaboration with Danish consumer electronics brand Bang & Olufsen, marrying Balenciaga’s edgy and futuristic aesthetic with Bang & Olufsen’s technological prowess. The result: a bag with a speaker embedded into it.  

While you may be deemed as a public nuisance instead of a fashion-forward, tech-loving guru with the accessory, the speaker bag still has its benefits. It was created in Bang & Olufsen’s Factory 5 in Struer, Denmark, where it was pearl-blasted, anodized, and hand-polished to look more like satin instead of aluminum, which it was made out of. Under its handles lay the speaker’s controls, and on the back is a flap that opens into the actual bag portion where you can keep your belongings.  

The other eye-catching piece is a face shield, worn by models on the runway, to offer privacy to shy and anxiety-riddled fans, maybe? Mercedes-AMG F1 Applied Science, the division of Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd that is in charge of its Formula One team and engineering development, powered its knowledge of aerodynamics and aerospace into fashion to birth this strange and scientifically marvelous face shield. 
  
To prevent fog from forming in the shield, months of aerodynamic testing were performed to perfect the sci-fi accessory. The testing also honed the mask’s breathability and stabilized the flow of CO2 to construct the ideal tool to hide your identity and simultaneously draw all eyes on you.

The polyurethane mask is not for off-the-rack consumption but is customized to fit each wearer’s head.  
  
Both accessories can be bought at Balenciaga’s new Couture flagship store in Paris so you could blast music in public and no one can tell who you are. 

[via Hypebeast and Highsnobiety, cover image via Balenciaga]