Esteemed sci-fi publisher Clarkesworld recently halted its open submission option after it received hundreds of pitches of AI-generated stories. According to the publishing house, being among the few ones that would pay for short stories from new writers, it attracted the attention of influencers promoting schemes to make money quickly using AI applications. While in past the house would receive just a few stories that were plagiarized, the advent of ChatGPT meant more work for the publisher that in February this year ended up banning over 500 stories created with the support of AI apps and its "authors".
But if that's what's happening in the world of Artificial Intelligence (AI) assisted writing tools, for the time being fashion seems a little bit more relaxed about AI text-to-image applications.
Christopher Kane's A/W 23 collection, showcased last week during London Fashion Week, featured front frilled vinyl pencil skirts and dresses, floral and weeds embroideries inspired by urban plants that spring up from pavements and by their resilience (a metaphor for growing up in working class Newarthill, outside Glasgow, Scotland) and three long stretch jersey body-con dresses (and one top) with animal prints.
Featuring all-over prints of rosy pigs, white and dark grey mice (ah, the allure of the Ratcatcher...) and cute little chicks, the hyper-real images were created using an AI application, though the designer didn't mention which one (but Midjourney can do pretty good interpretations of the theme, try with piglets, for example - View this photo).
In other cases Artificial Intelligence applications were used to create moods and an advertising campaign. During the fashion week in London, Moncler came up with a monumental event to celebrate its new collection.
Over the years the brand collaborated with a wide range of designers - including Junya Watanabe, Giambattista Valli and Thom Browne - on exclusive lines, but, since 2018, the brand switched its attention onto the Moncler Genius capsules with drops by Richard Quinn, Pierpaolo Piccioli, Simone Rocha, Craig Green, Rick Owens and Jonathan Anderson among the others.
Entitled "The Art of Genius 2023" the event at the Olympia London, a 19th-century exhibition center and event space in West Kensington, wasn't a runway show or an installation, but a massive playground with nine collaborators - Alicia Keys, Pharrell Williams, recently tapped as creative director of Louis Vuitton menswear, Adidas Originals, Mercedes-Benz, Roc Nation by Jay-Z, Palm Angels, Frgmt, Salehe Bembury, and Rick Owens - reinterpreting Moncler's vision. The idea was creating a platform to promote a mix of art, design, music, sport and technology.
During the event, Mercedez Benz presented an artwork consisting in a rather tacky monster vehicle that apparently took one year in the making and that seemed to be partially wrapped up in a puffa silvery jacket on steroids (you wish they had just done an "exclusive" NFT of this artwork to make it physically invisible…).
Alicia Keys headlined the event surrounded by dancers in Moncler gear; Williams presented an installation among green grass with models in functional clothes; Rick Owens opted for a dystopian future with a spaceship defined in the press release as "soundproof steel Sleep Pod".
Frgmt created instead a cuddly space where humans could interact with cute robots, while images inspired by the theme of love and created with the help of AI text-to-image applications were broadcast on giant screens.
Moncler's new campaign was also made with the help of Artificial Intelligence: in 2018 the company developed a campaign exploring the potential bonds between man and machine, and the new visuals take the discourse further.
Maison Meta and Creative Agency WeSayHi collaborated with the brand to create the 14 images featuring models (quite a few of them with their hands in their pockets - a good trick to help the AI avoiding to generate hands with multiple fingers, as it often happens...) wearing futuristic and voluminous puffer jackets and protective vests in bright colours such as royal blue or vivid orange, black, pastel pink and purple.
The images look polished and eye-catching, but they seem to be less mesmerizing than the highly curated images of outerwear inspired by biomimicry posted by artists who employ AI applications in their work.
The massive space and the combination of disciplines confirmed that fashion is shifting towards a new realm in which clothes are just one fraction of the equation and that maybe consumers will not necessary buy anything from a collection, but just get a ticket to be part of an experience with some fashion connections, as if they were going to a concert.
In the last thirty years, fashion shows changed a lot, going from events aimed at an audience of specialists from the industry to glamorous occasions where celebrities would be invited, eventually opening up to people who weren't necessarily part of the fashion industry elite, such as bloggers and then influencers.
Covid-19 changed the dynamics once again, pushing shows on digital platforms, but, post-Covid, things have become more complex, with shows often featuring a few celebrities walking among the models on the runway, plus painfully hip guests and fabulous icons in the front row, elements that are high on the entertainment factor, but also represent a great distraction from the clothes.
These signs reveal us that the fashion spectacle is mutating once again: in the 1990s shocking spectacles on the runways had a commercial value and attracted the media and buyers; nowadays, rather than aiming to shock their audiences, brands tend to create theatres of fashion on a vast scale, large platforms that can generate money through a variety of collaborations/disciplines, simultaneously.
But it is not just giant brands that are opting for this combination of intents: KidSuper's Colm Dillane may have lost the chance to become Louis Vuitton's men's Creative Director, but he is currently busy setting up a 10,000-square-foot studio in Williamsburg that will comprise a workspace, gallery, recording and photo studios, a retail store and a soccer field.
Fashion is evolving into a giant container in which the boundaries between art, design, culture, music, sport and fashion, are gradually being erased and in which the traditional designer will be moving through different media and will not necessarily focus only on fashion collections.
Maybe this process will be accelerated also by Artificial Intelligence applications that may introduce new ways of creating collections, but also alter the fashion week calendar. New York-based AI Studio Maison Meta is organizing in March (date to be confirmed, but probably around 17th March) the first-ever AI Fashion Week, an event that will showcase the latest advancements in artificial intelligence and fashion (submissions close on 1st March).
We may be still in the early days of these processes (and the slightly disquieting, thin and elongated models generated in the advertising campaign for the first AI Fashion Week prove that there's still a lot of work to do...), but progress is fast both in fashion and in technology and you can bet that there will be further glimpses of AI applications on the Milanese and Parisian runways in the next few days, and maybe even further confirmations of new trends in the presentation and evolution of the theatre of fashion.
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