By Mhia Vignoulle
AI is becoming a prominent factor in the evolution of technology and might become our new lifestyle in the future. AI is being adopted into a majority of fields, and whether creative or non-creative, people and businesses are finding benefits to its usage.
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AI has revolutionised one of the most influential creative forces of our world: fashion. According to an article on ‘AI in Fashion’ published by Deconstructing.AI, the “journey of AI in fashion started in the early 2000s, with rudimentary data analysis tools aimed at understanding consumer behaviours and preferences”.
But now, AI can be used to innovate designs, come up with creative ideas, offer advice, create stories and ideas. That means it appeals to the creative industry. With remarkable speed, AI has offered to all designers the opportunity for fast, efficient and inexpensive innovation in design, production and customer engagement.
AI may now deliver most of what all creative jobs require in a new technological way, which has caused concerns among many people in a variety of industries. People fear losing their jobs and losing the human touch in artistic fields, especially when AI seems to be ever-evolving.
Which is why a discussion about how some of the biggest fashion designers incorporate AI into their brand and who uses AI in the fashion industry is vital. Some of the names might surprise you.
Balenciaga
Known for its innovative silhouettes and avant-garde designs, Balenciaga has incorporated AI into their digital fashion shows and marketing strategies, primarily usingAI to predict trends and analyse consumer behaviour.
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Burberry
Burberry utilizes AI-powered machine learnings to understand customer behaviours, mainly towards their purchasing habits, to enhance engagement with the brand. AI takes care of their fraud detection and overall protection of online shoppers by identifying suspicious activities, and reinforcing good relations with their brand image regarding security and authenticity.
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Gucci
Known for its iconic and distinctive designs, Gucci focuses on using AI to enhance customers’ digital shopping experience. Through the adoption of an AI-powered virtual try-on technology, customers get to see how products look on them before purchasing. That helps customers make thought-through decisions, which limits the chances of returning items bought online. Gucci also provides customers with chatbots, offering personalized style advice and customer support.
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Prada
Prada has pushed the boundaries of visual creativity by using AI image generators to create imaginative versions of their products displayed in their fragrance campaigns. They have also collaborated with both AI and photographers on some shoots, mixing different styles of creative designs in a time-effective manner.
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Louis Vuitton
One of the most valuable and influential luxury brand, I present Louis Vuitton. They have started to explore AI to enhance their operations, including customer service and communication, mainly through offering chatbots to their customers. Louis Vuitton has also had strategic collaborations, such as the ‘Google Cloud Collaboration’, by leveraging AI’s tools to enhance business operations, improving demand forecasting, inventory management and product personalisation.
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Luxury brands primarily use AI for trend forecasting, designs, customer engagement and sustainability through managing the brand’s production and marketing process. But that isn’t all. With luxury fashion brands using AI for their future developments, many and most other fashion brands are starting to as well, such as Nike, Levi’s, H&M, Zara, Tommy Hilfiger, and many more.
But what of start-up brands? Are brands now beginning to be founded or gain success through AI ? What do fashion brands think of their ‘idols’ using AI ? Has this forced/ pressured them into gaining knowledge of the tools AI provides ? And what do they think about implementing AI in the fashion industry ?
These were all the questions we asked Layne Singh, founder and CEO of Rentierre, to evaluate the scale of impact this new evolution has on anyone interested in starting a fashion brand or pursuing a career in the fashion industry.
Rentierre’s use of AI
Founded on facilitating sustainable, seamless, and reliable luxury fashion to lend and borrow, Rentierre has managed to incorporate AI whilst maintaining their authenticity and sustainability. Singh describes their usage of AI to be ‘on a smaller scale’ by solely focusing on using it for social media posts, specifically using AI for image alterations, background and more.
“I believe that AI can be a beneficial tool for businesses such as mine, however AI and its use should be regulated, as it doesn’t only generally pose risk such as identity theft but could affect the whole fashion industry roles,” said Singh.
He explained avoiding using AI for captions and texts. “I have also suggested my marketer and PR team to avoid using it when possible in their work. This is mainly because it has been proven not to be effective and lacks authenticity in that field.”
He also explained not feeling forced into using AI: on in the contrary, he finds AI to be a useful tool for his business. “If I see an opportunity to use it in order to improve efficiency of our family operations, I don’t see a reason to not use it.”
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Overall, it is proven that AI, whether or not one agrees with it, can be very useful and time-effective. Through its efficient operations, driving innovations and eligibility to data scan customer behaviours and enhance their engagement, it is understandable that now most fashion brands are using it. While large luxury brands lead the charge, smaller companies like Rentierre show that AI can be adapted to fit a brand’s specific needs.
However as Singh has said, to avoid losing authenticity and the human touch that makes fashion so special, it may be valuable to regulate how to use AI. AI should be viewed as a collaborator and not the founder/soul innovator of a business.
Keep your brand your own.
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