In an extraordinary technological transformation, several of the world’s most recognizable fashion brands are investing time and money into artificial intelligence (AI) to reduce design time, decrease the risk of sustainability, and separate themselves as the luxury market consumer-preferred brand in an increasingly crowded luxury marketplace.
According to Vogue Business, global fashion brands such as Gucci and Balenciaga are beginning to explore their early experiments with AI-assisted concept generation tools as a means to reduce design cycles while still being creative. Even small, independent and new emerging brands are experimenting with AI and generative design technologies and other tools to find product and product design options to streamline an industry just starting to recover from pandemic-supply chain issues and pre-pandemic consumer demand.
The Trend: AI-Driven Design
Historically, designers would sketch out every single design concept by hand, and likely generated dozens of sketches just to create a fabric sample, or product prototype their time-consuming design draft. AI has the capacity to analyze decades of fashion still images on the web and provide a new design iteration in seconds – it is a game-changing tool.
“We’re not replacing what human creativity does, we’re enhancing it,” said one designer from Milan in relation to WWD. Our teams just last month utilized AI to suggest textures and colorways we would not think to put together at all.
It is not surprising to see luxury brands using AI for:
- Virtual-prototyping to minimize textile waste
- Custom design based on consumers
- Trend predictions for the next season, combined machine-learning and thousands of social-media commentary,
According to McKinsey’s 2024 report on the State of Fashion, AI is going to become (it already is) a differentiator luxury brand will have to add (in order to) be relevant with future Gen Z consumers.
Sustainability & Cost
AI also supports sustainability goals by minimizing the number of physical samples created. Recently publicized pilot projects conducted by Burberry and Kering expressed an interest in testing a fit virtually, before creating a physical prototype, to help reduce carbon emissions.
Even mid-tier brands are evaluating AI technologies to lessen the impact from developing products that are being over-developed and dumped, and the associated costs, according to Vogue Business. Many retailers are currently being forced to develop and adapt to changes in consumer demand, that occurred as a result of the pandemic.
Democratization of High Fashion
But it is not just the luxury elite that are employing AI. By virtue of their ability to use AI, it also means that new brands, independent brands and self-funded brands can now use low-cost and/or free AI services and are able to sell the same or similar designs across the world.
“Designer in Lagos or Bangkok now has the same infinite access to these tools as the Parisian atelier,” said an industry contact. “It is the ultimate flattening of the field.”
This democratization is yet another symptom of other fashion retailing trends. The last, and most valuable consumer interaction is via social media and e-commerce as a means for the small- and medium-sized brand to make that critical connection outside of their home markets quickly.
Why Now?
Luxury brands are beginning to adopt AI technologies while facing:
e.g. increasingly eroding margins; wearing consumer taste for speed and constant change; including the appropriate expectations of speed/substantial personalization and reviews.
If the sustainability architecture regulatory change in Europe is indirectly influencing the demand. Emerging quickly is AI technology that not represents not only artistic freedom, but financial freedom as well.
Analysts believe that the AI boom will transform the creative process in fashion as fundamentally as the ‘digital marketing’ revolution allowed designers to manage the fatigue of creating original content, or campaigns with the pragmatic objective of maximizing the potential value of retail models that sell online.
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