This video does not a fashion show held at the 2023 Burning Man festival in US

Viral video is from a Balenciaga fashion show held in October 2022, it has no link to the Burning Man festival.

Burning Man 2023 was a week-long gathering in the Black Rock Desert in Pershing County, Nevada. The 35th Burning Man event, it took place from August 27 to September 4, 2023. An estimated 73,000 people attended the festival. It has been extended for a day due to a rainstorm that hit the region on September 1. The unexpected rains turned the site into mud, leaving attendees stuck and having to conserve food, water, and fuel. Following this, social media users shared images and videos of a fashion show, claiming that they were from the Burning Man festival. 

In one of the videos shared widely showed a woman in black attire tramping through the mud, and the caption states, “Check this cat walk over thick mud at the Burning Man festival in Nevada in the midst of natural disasters like flood and purported Ebola. #Nevada #LasVegas #BurningMan #BurningMan2023 #burningmanebola”

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Fact Check

We began our investigation using reverse image search with the key frames of the video and the results led us to video uploaded to a YouTube channel on October 3, 2022. According to the channel, the video was from the Paris Fashion Week.

According to Forbes, the Balenciaga show, titled “The Mud Show,” was held during Paris Fashion Week in 2022 to display the fashion house’s Spring 2023 collection. The Forbes report shared a photo of the model seen in the viral video with the caption, “The Balenciaga Spring ’23 Lariat dress backstage.” A feature in the American fashion magazine Vogue identified the model shown in the viral footage and Balenciaga show as Finnish model Minttu Vesala.

In further search we found multiple media reports from October 2022 that had carried photos and videos similar to the now viral clip. 

According to the  New York Times report, the video was from the Paris Fashion Week show held in October 2022 in a muddy pit. This particular show was organised by the high-end fashion brand Balenciaga. The show was a “metaphor for digging for the truth and being down to earth”.

Conclusion

Fact Crescendo found the claim made along with the viral video to be False. Viral video is from Balenciaga show, titled “The Mud Show,” which was held during Paris Fashion Week in October 2022. It has no link to the Burning Man festival.