The fashion industry has shifted from ‘pushing’ garments on the market through simple forecasting to ‘pulling’ products based on actual demand generated by social media. The power of social media means trends are now more often established by consumers, as opposed to retailers and editors. In addition, digital technology gives small brands an easy way to engage with consumers, who are increasingly glued to their smartphones and the internet. E-commerce provides access to the “endless aisle” that features many more brands than traditional TV advertising or store visits could (Amed et al. 2019). Many fashion brands have difficulties identifying the ever-changing fashion needs of their customers and competing with their competitors that are mainly operating online (Hanbury 2018). A solution for their problem may be using AI to design new trendy garments.
AI is viewed as too mechanical to capture the creative core of fashion, however, it has the possibility to blur the lines between technology and creativity. A new emerging development is that AI and machine learning are utilized in the creative process of designing garments. Thus, AI can not only help with predicting and spotting what customers are most likely to demand, but it can also give design recommendations (Amed et al. 2018).
This new implication of AI makes use of a generative adversarial network (GAN), which incorporates two deep neural networks that operate alongside each other to learn from raw data. In essence, it looks at many examples to then apply that style to existing clothing trends to predict which attributes customers prefer (Knight 2017).
The technology is still new, but Amazon has already developed an ‘AI fashion designer’ that has the ability to analyse images of a particular style of fashion and generate new garments in this same style from scratch (Knight 2017).
Therefore, fashion brands should invest in this new development since AI will not only help them to discover new trends, but it will also help them to design garments that reflect new fashion trends almost instantly. This would give them a competitive advantage compared to their competitors. In addition, lead times will decrease since the designing process will take less time.
Amed, I., Berg, A., Balchandani, A., Andersson. J., Hendrich, S. and Young, R. (2019) ‘The state of fashion 2019’. Accessed on 15 October 2019 on https://mck.co/2twu77j.
Amed, I., Berg, A., Balchandani, A., Beltrami. M., Hendrich, S. and Rölkens, F. (2018a) ‘The state of fashion 2019: A year of awakening’. Accessed on 15 October 2019 on https://mck.co/2DQwiZX.
Knight, W. (2017) ‘Amazon has developed an AI fashion designer’. Accessed on 15 October 2019 on https://bit.ly/2w0n74E.
Hanbury, M. (2018) ‘H&M is caught in a ‘vicious cycle’ of discounting, and now it’s found itself with a mountain of unsold clothes’. Accessed on 15 October 2019 on https://www.businessinsider.com/why-hm-business-is-struggling-201804?international=true&r=US&IR=T
Hi Jasmin,
First of all, this is an interesting topic. The fashion industry is not only a highly competitive one, but is also dealing with sustainability problems. It is predicted that water consumption in the fashion industry will grow by 50 percent to 118 billion cubic meters, and its carbon footprint will increase to 2,791 million tons and the amount of waste it creates will hit 148 million tons (The Fashion Law, 2019). H&M for instance, has enormous unsold inventory, which is a big problem. The focus of every fashion brand should be on finding the true customer needs, in order to sell the right garments to the right target group, reducing the risk of unsold inventory. You stated that ‘AI will not only help them to discover new trends, but it will also help them to design garments that reflect new fashion trends almost instantly’. I totally agree with you. For instance, Inditex the world’s largest clothing retailer and owner of Zara, already uses artificial intelligence to predict consumer-behavior. Also, with the help of AI-powered chatbots, Zara is better equipped to handle personalized customer service functions (Hickey 2018).
References
Hickey, A. (2018, June 18). Zara stocks up on AI, big data, analytics partnerships and investments. Retrieved October 16, 2019, from https://www.ciodive.com/news/zara-stocks-up-on-ai-big-data-analytics-partnerships-and-investments/525841/
Stevenson, S. (2012, June 21). Slate’s Use of Your Data. Retrieved October 16, 2019, from https://slate.com/gdpr?redirect_uri=/culture/2012/06/zaras-fast-fashion-how-the-company-gets-new-styles-to-stores-so-quickly.html?via=gdpr-consent
Hi Nienke!
Thanks for your comment. You look at it from a sustainability standpoint, which is really interesting!
Did you know that the fashion industry is the second-largest polluter, just after the oil industry? For example, the produce 1kg of cotton 20 000 liters of water are needed and 1.5 trillion liters of water are used by the fashion industry each year.
The chemicals used in the production of clothing are really toxic and harmful for the environment and the people that are dependent on the rivers in which these chemicals are dumped in.
Consumers should really be aware of the environmental impact clothing has on the plant! Luckily more and more companies and organisations are investing in research to develop new sustainable materials and non-toxic dying processes.
If you are interested in the environmental impact the fashion industry has on the world you should really visit ‘Fashion For Good’ in Amsterdam!
Sustain your style. (n.d.). Fashion’s Environmental Impact. Retrieved October 16, 2019, from https://www.sustainyourstyle.org/old-environmental-impacts
Hi Jasmin,
Interesting read! This ‘AI Designer’ produced by Amazon makes you wonder whether humans will still be necessary to design clothes. If AI is able to design fashion and predict trends, this would be a huge opportunity for small fashion brands with a limited budget. I also wonder if this algorithm will become an off-the-shell product, available to buy for anyone. This could really disrupt the fashion industry, in a sense that everyone would be able to design clothes.
However, I do fear that as the AI learns trends from social media, and is able to predict the trends of the future, the fashion industry will become less creative and innovative, and therefore more generic.
Therefore, I think that AI will not replace the human designers, but will most likely be a complement to their creativity, as this is one element of the human brain that AI is not yet able to imitate (IBM, n.d.)
Sources:
IBM (n.d.). The quest for AI creativity. Retrieved on 16 October 2019 from https://www.ibm.com/watson/advantage-reports/future-of-artificial-intelligence/ai-creativity.html
Hi Sjoerd!
Thanks for your comment. I have to agree with you that this implication of AI is still not ready to replace a fashion designer completely.
However, I do think that if the technology is further developed and enhanced a lot of work of a fashion designer could be automized.
For example, pattern drafting is the first and most important step in dressmaking. Designers typically start with a general sketch on paper; add styles, elements and colors; revise and refine everything; and finally deliver their design to dressmakers. AI could accelerate this time-consuming and labour-intensive process by having GANs automatically generate pattern designs.
You should take a look at a fashion brand called ‘Coven.ai’. This brand is founded by former MIT students and already makes use of AI to design patterns!
Peng, T. (2019, April 17). Is the Fashion World Ready for AI-Designed Dresses? Retrieved October 16, 2019, from https://medium.com/syncedreview/is-the-fashion-world-ready-for-ai-designed-dresses-853a5d419bb2