Courtesy of CARINE ROITFELD
During Shanghai Fashion Week FW26, the photography exhibition project False Narratives brings together two long-standing creative collaborators. Carine Roitfeld and Sebastián Faena. Presented in Shanghai, the project revisits their shared visual language through a series of images that blur the boundaries between fiction, memory and fashion storytelling.
At the heart of False Narratives lies a radical approach to editorial imagery: each photograph is a constructed story, not a fixed document of reality. Roitfeld describes their collaboration as an ongoing dialogue based on their shared desire to ‘tell stories’, reinterpreting familiar cultural references and pushing them into unexpected territory. Throughout the series, archetypes such as the bourgeois woman and the rebellious girl, as well as historical figures, are reimagined as stylised visual fictions that deliberately resist straightforward interpretation.
The exhibition brings together key works from their shared archive, showcasing surreal transformations and cinematic reimaginings, as well as pop-cultural fantasies and historical references. These include a contemporary take on Marie Antoinette, featuring models such as Lara Stone. These images, once seen as standalone covers or editorial moments, are now revealed as a unified body of work.
In False Narratives, Roitfeld and Faena create a visual world in which disruption appears deliberate and elegance is unpredictable. As Roitfeld notes, Faena’s images thrive on defying expectations, embracing boldness, ambiguity and a sense of playful instability. Presented during Shanghai Fashion Week FW26, the project reframes their collaboration as a single, continuous narrative rather than as a series of fragmented fashion moments.
JORDAN BARRETT
Photography by SEBASTIÁN FAENA
