Imran Amed makes the over-tightened rubber band gesture when asked over dinner how he sees the fashion business in 2024. “There are too many risk factors.” The wars in Israel and Ukraine, the challenge of artificial intelligence (AI), the recession, sustainability and the climate crisis… the market has grown rapidly after the pandemic, but I believe that “If the tensions get stronger at some point, it could break,” he says. His tablemates nod. After all, that's why we're here, in one of the restaurants in the Soho FarmHouse, a kind of small private village of the exclusive hotel chain (access by invitation only) in the Cotswolds (United Kingdom). Just over 150 guests will follow around twenty conferences (which around 6,000 registered people also follow via streaming) over three days and, in their free time, dine, eat and drink in different rooms to discuss various topics and, ultimately, network.
Amed founded BOF Voices in 2016 as a complement to his digital newspaper “The Business of Fashion”, which is now considered a reference publication for anyone interested or professional in the fashion industry. Over these seven years, his “Big Thinkers” program, as he calls his guests, has grown, as has his share of sponsors. “It's my favorite time of year,” he says, “and more and more interesting people are joining the call.” On stage profiles like that of Leena Nair, CEO of Chanel, in her first public interview; Richard Dickson, new CEO of GAP and architect of Barbie's resurrection at Mattel; John C. Jay, president of creative at Uniqlo; designers Jonathan Anderson, Diane von Fürstenberg and Matthieu Blazy; the director and actor Dan Levy, the artists Billy Porter and Rita Ora or the co-founder of Airbnb, Joe Gebbia, coexist with others who are less known but equally powerful: the Syrian documentary filmmaker Waad Al-Kateab, the climate activist Vidhura Ralapanawe (India) or Sammy Oteng (Ghana), the sports coach Owen Eastwood, Anca Marola, data director at LVMH or Sammy Basso, a young scientist who, among other things, fights against progeria, the degenerative disease from which he suffers.
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The selected audience includes communication directors of luxury brands, consultants, headhunters, owners of textile companies from different continents, CEOs and young founders of start-ups, what Amed and his team call “community”. In fact, the most frequently asked question to break the ice during free time is: “Is this your first time here?” Some, many, attend the event faithfully year after year and already know each other; Others, the least of them, walk through the rooms of the Soho Farmhouse with gestures ranging from shyness to wonder.
Imran Amed, director and founder of “The Business of Fashion” during the presentation of BOF VOICES 2023. John Phillips (Getty Images for BoF)
In such Fashion Bilderberg clubs, two phrases are often repeated during the first casual encounters: “This is not fashionable” and “Fashion is connected to everything that happens in the world,” two ideas that are actually connected. It is the agents outside the sector who can predict how the industry will be affected in the near future. In the three days in which resilience, the freedom for creativity in large corporations, sustainable solutions or social economics were discussed, the ears of the participants were focused primarily on artificial intelligence, as a concept, cumbersome and as an effective tool that the world, as we know it, and which is as necessary as it is controversial in this business that employs hundreds of thousands of workers and tries to awaken the desire to consume in as many people as possible.
According to several experts, these are some of the dynamics that have already changed forever, although most of us still don't know it:
The 30% rule
It is estimated that 30% is the general percentage of sales increases and efficiency gains. Everything will be a third easier to create and a third easier to sell. “So far we are clear about the data and preferences of our main customers, but thanks to generative artificial intelligence (that is, the one that creates its own content from the information entered by the user) we know how to give each customer what .” You want to. search,” commented Anca Marola, data director at LVMH, the world’s largest luxury brand conglomerate. Thanks to AI, prototypes are created in minutes, estimate more accurately how many units of each product are needed, and are distributed more efficiently “because they can be manufactured by predicting what each point of sale needs.” explained Marola, who also explained that according to a study by the consulting firm McKinsey & Co, the generative artificial intelligence business currently represents a total benefit of more than three trillion dollars for the companies that implement it.
Anca Marola, Data Director of the LVMH Group, during her presentation. John Phillips (Getty Images for BoF)
See what you need to see
“We moved from an algorithmic model, where we chose what to show the user based on data, to a generator model, where customized content is created for them,” said Mariam Chahin, global director at Microsoft. To illustrate, Rachel Higham from creative agency WPP showed a video in which Jennifer Lopez congratulates someone on their anniversary and invites them to go on a cruise. Personalization, in this case through voice generation, will change advertising forever. Another example, also created by WPP, shows an advertisement created for Nestlé yogurts in which the machine can expand Vermeer's famous painting “The Milkmaid” through a selection of images to show what is not visible in the work . “In this case, the visual information entered must be correct; The key lies in the “prompt”, i.e. the data that the user enters to generate the expected answer. For her part, Marola explained minutes earlier that one of the achievements of artificial intelligence compared to conventional advertising “is knowing in which specific media to invest the money because there are not enough,” commented the data director of LVMH, owner of Dior, Céline, Kenzo, Givenchy, etc. “For certain programs, it is easy to know which audience will take you into account and which will not, regardless of the volume of the media in question,” he added.
The end of the designer?
Matthieu Blazy, artistic director of Bottega Veneta and one of the most renowned creatives of today, explained that some of his incredible fabrics, always made by hand, “could not be made without the help of technology, which determines what is possible. ““to materialize and what not.” According to Mariam Chahin, the interface between creativity and artificial intelligence lies in the almost unlimited development of the imagination. In fact, Microsoft's global director showed a graphic pointing out certain tasks such as market strategy and creative development that require a high level of empathy “and therefore cannot be replaced by the machine.” However, it handles the “tedious” tasks of gathering information or writing reports. “Thanks to artificial intelligence, I will have more time; I will be a better friend, a better partner and a better mother,” she described.
To support the hypothesis that real creativity is authentically human and AI is simply a tool for its development, the Argentine artist Andrés Reisinger explained his work process: with the color pink as the common thread of his work, which ranges from the production of furniture to He explained that AI “makes the creation of prototypes much easier. The tedious process of figuring out which ideas are viable and which are not is simplified.”
Matthieu Blazy, artistic director of the Bottega Veneta brand. John Phillips (Getty Images for BoF)
In fact, the process that has been part of the outcome in this area until today (especially when it comes to a certain type of luxury) is in danger. When Matthieu Blazy spoke about the beauty of the flaw “that makes each garment unique because he knows there is a hand behind it,” Anca Marola showed her Peekaboo bag from Fendi, a brand of the LVMH group; a limited edition printed design. “It takes 130 pieces to make. What used to take us two weeks now takes us minutes,” he said. Asked whether these new methods would wipe out part of the workforce, he replied: “We all have a workload; It simply takes away some of that burden and eliminates what is the most laborious.” What was not mentioned, however, is that artificial intelligence in the service of fashion serves, among other things, to give the audience what they want much faster than before, something like the famous model from the Inditex collection. and data distribution, but further developed, which allows companies' coffers to grow. Where is the novelty in a world tailored to the consumer?
Brands know everything
Companies know not only the personal data and preferences of each customer, but, above all, what we think about them. Five years ago, consulting firm McKinsey, in collaboration with Business of Fashion, began working on reports on “brand magic,” or measuring the perception a brand has of itself and comparing it to the public’s perception of it has. “The magic happens when they coincide,” says the consulting firm, citing Coca-Cola as an example of the balance between what is communicated and what is sought. Artificial intelligence now makes it possible to compare thousands of comments on social networks and websites about a specific brand and compare them with the content communicated by the same brand in a matter of seconds. This year, Miu Miu, Armani and Boss are on the podium of those who best suit their audience. Once again, it's about giving the public what they want, even if the public itself doesn't know what it wants.
Help make the world a better place
Artificial intelligence can also have major positive social impacts. This is the approach used by Manu Chopra, a young Indian engineer who has been launching various technology projects in his country for several years, such as the Janta Project, which identifies areas of extreme poverty and empowers their residents (mainly women). an accommodation offers alternative: feeding data into various AI programs that are used for other projects related to environmental sustainability. They do it as a part-time job and charge almost ten times the minimum wage, which is currently 55 euros per month in the Asian country. “The caste system means that it takes the equivalent of three generations for a person to rise socially. With this kind of work, they can do it in a decade or less.”
Tech guru Aza Raskin in his BOF VOICES 2023 talk. Samir Hussein (Getty Images for BoF)
And 'help break it down'
Aza Raskin invented the infinite scroll that we all practice today. He later regretted this and illustrated it in “The Social Media Dilemma” (2020), the documentary that explicitly shows how the dictatorship of the algorithm has changed the way we relate and damaged our mental health. Today he leads the project “The Earth Species,” which uses AI to decode certain communication mechanisms in animals, and is part of the Center for Human Technology, which advocates for the fair and mature use of technology. He knows better than anyone the damage that can result from the uncontrolled spread of artificial intelligence tools. “The world has already changed, there is no turning back, and these tools have evolved faster than expected,” he says. The model of learning and generative content means that “many today do not even know what certain programs are capable of and, even worse, how they can influence the hands of certain people.”
As an example, Raskin used the fictional example of a friend of his, a technology journalist, spreading a hoax about her around the room. It takes a few minutes of tweets, fake news and various computer programs until a hypothetical audience ends up canceling it because of alleged bribery. So easy. “The only thing you can do about it is to ask those responsible for these tools to use them when they are mature and to distribute them.” It’s that difficult.