At the fork in the road of his education, Louis-Gabriel Nouchi was accepted at Gobelins Paris, a renowned French school for visual arts, and at Brussels’ La Cambre Mode(s).

The path he chose has been amply covered in the seven years since he launched the LGN label, but for spring, the designer gave a glimpse of the road not taken.

Instead of a show, he unveiled the spring LGN collection at Silencio through a two-and-a-half-minute animated film inspired by the Blade Runner universe from Philip K. Dick’s sci-fi novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.” It was developed from his drawings with French studio Wizz.

Nouchi homed in on replicants, the story’s android antagonists that embodied how he feels about the sharp uptick in AI-generated imagery.

“It’s a robot that looks like a human and starts to think like a human; there’s an uncertainty,” the designer said in a preview. “On social media now, my first reflex is to wonder [whether images] are fake or real.”

To translate this into clothing, the designer played with trompe-l’oeil, revisiting his strong-shouldered, tailored silhouettes through layering. A floor length coat became, say, a boxy blouson, a trouser and a fluid trailing sheer skirt.

Gender ambiguity prevailed as he dropped female-adapted styles, but not female models, to reiterate his ideal of inclusivity for all bodies and genders.

His experience with the film also informed textures for the season, with latex used to telegraph glossy artificiality or a sheer top half on a double-breasted jacket nodding to a sketch’s lighting.

Cunning darts on the ribcage or along the legs and inseam of jeans alluded to pencil strokes defining a chiseled musculature – without constraining the real body.

In photos, it packed a definite visual punch. But what made Nouchi’s work remarkable was the fit and feel, an experience you can’t have through any virtual means – yet.