When AI meets fashion: Are the bots already in your closet?
AI is designing clothes, creating ads, and tracking who’s buying what. Relax. We’re seeing what it can’t do too. Take a look
Spend a few seconds on Instagram, looking at, say, a striped, charcoal-grey, crossbody bag made from recycled plastic bottles. Ooh interesting! Then, watch the dam burst. Every brand that’s selling striped bags, grey bags, crossbody bags and recycled accessories will find its way to your feed. Reels will start showing What’s In My Bag videos. Every Birkin-toting nepo baby and Cabat-clutching celebrity will feature on the Endless Scroll.
From there, it’s just a matter of a moment’s weakness – a flash sale perhaps – for your vague idea to turn into an actual purchase. Do you have good taste or did the bots make you do it?
A 2023 McKinsey Report, titled Generative AI: Unlocking the Future of Fashion, suggests that machine-learning software has the potential to expand fashion businesses and serve customers better. It projects that AI could boost fashion, apparel and luxury by $150 to $275 billion in three to five years. Google has already crowned Alle, an AI-based fashion-tips provider, the Best App of the Year for India. See how it’s part of your shopping spree already, with mixed results.
Tinker tailor
Raghavendra Rathore, who runs his eponymous bespoke menswear brand, says that AI is doing for fashion what it is doing in every other sector: “Analysing vast datasets to identify trends and generate insights.” In fashion, it’s specifically helping human designers create styles based on what customers have already liked. “Generative AI reduces design and prototyping time, lowering costs and boosting efficiency. It personalises a client’s requirements through recommendations and virtual styling. The speed, precision and predictive capabilities helps designers innovate and experiment,” Rathore says.
It’s doing the ads too. French womenswear brand Coperni’s Autumn/Winter ’23 campaign included a 40-second clip featuring model Lila Moss. The company used AI to transpose an avatar of Moss, modelling the collection, into a continuous flow of virtual worlds. The software supplied the environment, music, lighting, even her accompanying mechanical dog. The film, titled The Wolf and the Lamb, played for six months straight on Coperni’s YouTube channel and a dedicated website, showing over three million versions of the looks. No human could have pulled it off.
At the European fashion brand Mango, AI is now put to work even before the styles hit the shelves. This year, the company developed a way to feed images of their new teen collection on to humanoid models, and retouch them so it all looked like a magazine shoot. It was meant to mimic real-world styling. And yet, it put off humans . Critics called it false advertising, a way to render human models obsolete, and just plain creepy.
“Trust is still rooted in human expertise, and that’s something AI hasn’t earned fully yet,” says Taufiq Khan, founder of Wolf Bread Animation Studios. It works fast, but missteps are amplified fast too. “When it comes to creativity, AI outputs lack the ‘soul’ of human effort. It’s like trying to replicate nature. You can get close, but it’s never quite the same.”
Tracking it all
So companies are working around the uncanny valley. For last year’s Spring/Summer collection, American brand Collina Strada banked on AI to boost its eco-conscious, repurposed garments. Machines analysed the brand’s archives and suggested new looks based on the fabrics and processes that were already available. It took some repeating and refining, the team admits. But it was a faster way to envision and create garments.
At New York Fashion Week, actual models wore those AI-generated designs: A strappy top was shifted down the body to become a mini dress. A skirt was gathered like a parachute and worn with a hoodie. Some trousers had three waistbands. Silk suits had lace inserts and a cloud of tulle. The models walked the runway, fists clenched, grins forced, giving the show an eerie atmosphere. Audiences loved it.
Among multinational brands, the hope is that AI keeps an eye on everything, from what different factories are producing and what’s getting shipped where, to which styles are trending online, to streamline their business. Adidas deploys AI to customise sneaker designs for each user. Italian luxury brand Zegna’s AI tool lets each buyer pick the colours and fabrics they want for their suits. British luxury fashion house Burberry can identify slow-moving items and changing consumer preferences via AI, and quickly adjust distribution in different markets.It’s positioned as a green move: It reduces surplus, gets products to where they’re selling most, and helps designers to pivot before the trends die on the shelf.
And yet, AI is far from saving the world, or even fashion. “It raises concerns about job displacement and the potential overshadowing of human creativity,” says Rathore. “The challenge lies in balancing innovation with the industry’s creative essence and craftsmanship.” It won’t replace humans completely or permanently either, says Khan. As with all machines, AI can only regurgitate from what it’s seen, it can’t produce a new idea, build a lasting trend or predict which collab will fail. “When it comes to creativity, identity and individuality, that’s still where humans reign supreme.”
From HT Brunch, November 30, 2024
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