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The exponential growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has ignited discussions about its potential impact on employment, particularly concerning job displacement. In the luxury fashion sector, while AI is a frequent topic of both formal and informal conversations, its practical application remains less pervasive than anticipated. This cautious integration stems from the industry’s inherent structural complexities and a steadfast commitment to heritage and craftsmanship.
Implementing transformative technologies like AI in luxury fashion is a nuanced process. The intricate web of teams and organisational structures often decelerates the pace of adoption. Moreover, the luxury sector prioritises caution, especially when it comes to preserving brand identity and exclusivity.
This cautious approach is underlined by a study by the Comité Colbert, in collaboration with Bain & Company, titled “Luxury and Technology: Artificial Intelligence’s Quiet Revolution.” The report reveals that luxury brands are exploring AI applications primarily to enhance operational efficiency, such as sales forecasting, inventory optimisation, and quality control, and to enrich customer engagement through personalised marketing and customer segmentation. However, the integration of AI into the creative process is approached with deliberate prudence.
As Grégory Boutté, Chief Digital and Client Officer at Kering, articulates:
“What sets the luxury sector apart from other industries is the crucial role of art direction, which must embody the brand, reflect its identity, and drive creativity. AI can never replace human creativity, but it can facilitate the creative process.”
Grégory Boutté for bain.com
Balancing innovation with brand integrity
In the high-end fashion sphere, the apprehension that AI might supplant creative teams is rooted in concerns over diluting the essence and exclusivity that define luxury. Luxury brands thrive on unique innovation that captivates and inspires consumers, rather than merely replicating prevailing trends. Additionally, issues surrounding intellectual property and data security, particularly with generative AI and open-source tools, necessitate a cautious approach.
While some brands, influenced by their size, culture, and resources, are experimenting with AI in product design—utilising it for ideation, 3D visualisation, and prototyping—they ensure that these AI-generated outputs serve as foundations rather than final creations. The indispensable “inspirational spark” remains the domain of visionary creative directors.
Taken in another perspective, the “collaboration” with these innovations opens new opportunities: interactive AI platforms can engage customers in the design journey itself, allowing for co-creation and personalisation, thereby strengthening brand loyalty.
AI is increasingly perceived as a co-creator, offering inspiration and a spectrum of design possibilities without dictating the ultimate creative vision. It is a novel way to see AI as a starting point—a way to spark creative ideas quickly. But it’s the role of designers to refine these concepts, infusing them with the emotional and cultural context that a specific brand is known for. This human intervention ensures that while technology accelerates the creative process, it doesn’t overshadow the narrative and craftsmanship that define luxury collections.
Read also: Fashion and AI: Technologies geared towards more sustainable manufacturing practices
Future tools that streamline the creative flow without distorting it
Examples such as designer Norma Kamali’s collaboration with Maison Meta, demonstrate how generative AI can actually amplify creativity in high-end fashion. By developing a bespoke AI system trained on the brand’s archives, Kamali’s team was able to swiftly generate “Kamali-style” designs from simple prompts, leveraging technologies like Stable Diffusion XL and open-source tool Fooocus1.
When skillfully utilised (the purpose and vision) and meticulously trained (quality inputs), generative AI can broaden creative horizons. Its capacity to process vast arrays of imagery and archival data enables the conception of novel combinations and groundbreaking ideas. Artistic directors can harness these tools as catalysts, exploring materials, techniques, and artisanal crafts from diverse industries, while also receiving real-time insights into customer preferences.
Beyond the creative realm, the ideation, AI offers tangible benefits in product development, as it can generate useful ameliorations, solutions a human could never have envisioned. A speaking example could be in pattern placement, as f.ex Lectra’s AI-powered solutions, who could suggest a slight change in the pattern—such as modifying the width of skirt pleats—which would be an invisible change in the product itself, but could drastically reduce the fabric waste produced in nesting, limiting the use of fabrics and therefore create not only ecologically but also economical gains (which usually go together.)
Read also: Fashion meets AI: The future of an augmented industry
Preserving the essence of human creativity
So to see, leaving it all in the “hands” of AI, everything is under control, as this superhuman intelligence reads, sees, knows, analyses everything. There is no way to miss anything, no FOMO, nor space for error, for accident. No space for surprise.
While AI provides comprehensive analysis and minimises errors, it operates within the parameters of control and predictability.
But what is it with the magic of human creativity? The serendipitous nature of its expression elaborates after a laborious exploration, days, weeks, months or years of research, work and reflections. The sudden flashes of inspiration often born from unexpected challenges remain irreplaceable and mysterious.
As much as the beauty of Bach’s compositions lie in their seemingly perfect symmetry, he was a master in the art of controlling dissonances. Like calligraphy is working with accidents, a designer’s creative process flows with unexpected encounters and its uniqueness lies in this exploration itself.
“The fascination of life is the unknown result.”
Alan Watts
Yet this unknown result, mystery, is also what sometimes AI could provide, as even the developers do not know what happens and how it works, in the “black box”.
But true creative magic lies and happens in the balance of those opposites, between the known and the unknown, control and freedom. The beauty of artistic endeavours lies in navigating the interplay between order and chaos, control and spontaneity. AI may be an extraordinary tool for calculation and simulation, yet the moment it intersects with physical reality—the tactile, sensory world in which fashion still holds its true (and economic) value—surprise, the unpredictable sparkle reclaims its place.
By thoughtfully balancing technological advancements with the necessary human touch, the industry can navigate the evolving landscape while preserving its core essence. And as the fashion industry accelerates, driven by growth targets and marketing demands, there’s an ongoing tension between data-driven methodologies and the artist’s pursuit of quality and meaning.
The path forward involves embracing both resistance and innovation: delving deeper into manual craftsmanship, specialising, being experts, while intelligently integrating and shaping digital tools. It is crucial to dive into them, and platforms like Le Défi create extensive mappings of AI-tools in order to help the acceleration and transformation of France’s fashion and clothing industry.
As The Interline, a fashion and technology magazine, underline as the #1 key take-away of their latest DPC (Digital Product Creation) report 2
“Creativity pushes technology forwards. Similarly to how traditional craftsmanship and creative design have informed and advanced one another, a new generation of designers (self-taught and institutionally-trained) are testing the frontiers of digital design and, in the process, nudging the window of technological progress forwards.”
The Interline
References:
1 https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/technology/can-ai-carry-on-a-designers-legacy/
2 https://www.theinterline.com/2024/12/16/digital-product-creation-report-2024-available-now/Â