AI Won’t Replace Creativity of Fashion Designers

A model holds a cat during the Yuhan Wang catwalk show at
London Fashion Week, London, Britain, Feb. 20, 2022. (REUTERS PHOTO)
A model holds a cat during the Yuhan Wang catwalk show at London Fashion Week, London, Britain, Feb. 20, 2022. (REUTERS PHOTO)
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AI Won’t Replace Creativity of Fashion Designers

A model holds a cat during the Yuhan Wang catwalk show at
London Fashion Week, London, Britain, Feb. 20, 2022. (REUTERS PHOTO)
A model holds a cat during the Yuhan Wang catwalk show at London Fashion Week, London, Britain, Feb. 20, 2022. (REUTERS PHOTO)

AI is transforming the fashion world but the fast-growing technology will never be a replacement for designers' "original creativity".

This is the opinion of fashion innovator Calvin Wong, who has developed the Interactive Design Assistant for Fashion (AiDA) -- the world's first designer-led AI system. It uses image-recognition technology to speed up the time it takes for a design to go from a first sketch to the catwalk.

"Designers have their fabric prints, patterns, color tones, initial sketches and they upload the images. Then our AI system can recognize those design elements and come up with more proposals for designers to refine and modify their original design," Wong told AFP.

Wong said AiDA's particular strength was its ability to present "all the possible combinations" for a designer to consider, something that was impossible without artificial intelligence.

An exhibition at Hong Kong's M+ Museum in December featured collections by 14 designers developed using the tool.

But Wong stressed it was about "facilitating designers’ inspiration" not "using AI to take over their creativity". "We must treasure the designer's original creativity," he added.

Wong heads up the Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence in Design (AidLab), a collaboration between Britain's Royal College of Art (RCA) and Hong Kong Polytechnic University where he is a professor in fashion.

- Preservation of skills

RCA vice chancellor Naren Barfield predicted the impact of AI on the fashion industry would be "transformational". "The impact is going to be huge from the ideation and conception stage through to prototyping, right the way through to manufacture, distribution and then ultimately recycling," he said.

So-called personalization is already being used to improve customer experience with better product recommendations and more effective searches, helping shoppers find what they want quickly and easily. But as the technology evolves, so is the range of highly specialized tools being developed.

AiDA was just one of the AidLab projects being showcased in the British capital ahead of London Fashion Week.

Others included the Neo Couture project, which aims to use advanced technologies to digitally preserve the specialized skills and techniques used by couturiers. This tool is creating an AI-assisted training system to help teach couture skills.

- Under control

The future of AI in fashion design, however, is not clear cut. New York brand Collina Strada's founder Hillary Taymour this week admitted that she and her team used AI image generator Midjourney to create the collection they showed at New York Fashion Week earlier this month.

Although Taymour only used images of the brand's own past looks to help generate its Spring/Summer 2024 collection, looming legal issues could keep AI-generated clothes off the catwalks for now.

"I would expect to hear from designers that there are questions of intellectual property rights, and to get that regulated will need a lot of work," said Rebecca Lewin, a senior curator at London's Design Museum.

RCA's Barfield said the area would be tricky, but he expected it to be resolved.

He suggested that if AI gives companies competitive advantage, they'll invest and take it up quickly. The only thing currently holding companies back was the "massive investment" in infrastructure required, he said.

- Concerns

As for designers' fears that it might become a substitute for the human creative process, he said, the key is in who controls the decision making.

Using a "genetic algorithm" where you started with one design and used the software to generate successive ones, the computer could produce 1,000 varying looks, something that might take weeks to draw, he said. On the other hand, if the designer retained control, AI could offer huge benefits by hugely speeding up the process "without necessarily making the decisions for them", he added.



Greece's 'Instagram Island' Santorini nears Saturation Point

Tourists queue as they wait to take a picture from one of the balconies. Aris Oikonomou / AFP
Tourists queue as they wait to take a picture from one of the balconies. Aris Oikonomou / AFP
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Greece's 'Instagram Island' Santorini nears Saturation Point

Tourists queue as they wait to take a picture from one of the balconies. Aris Oikonomou / AFP
Tourists queue as they wait to take a picture from one of the balconies. Aris Oikonomou / AFP

One of the most enduring images of Greece's summer travel brand is the world-famous sunset on Santorini Island, framed by sea-blue church domes on a jagged cliff high above a volcanic caldera.
This scene has inspired millions of fridge magnets, posters, and souvenirs -- and now the queue to reach the viewing spot in the clifftop village of Oia can take more than 20 minutes, said AFP.
Santorini is a key stopover of the Greek cruise experience. But with parts of the island nearing saturation, officials are considering restrictions.
Of the record 32.7 million people who visited Greece last year, around 3.4 million, or one in 10, went to the island of just 15,500 residents.
"We need to set limits if we don't want to sink under overtourism," Santorini mayor Nikos Zorzos told AFP.
"There must not be a single extra bed... whether in the large hotels or Airbnb rentals."
As the sun set behind the horizon in Oia, thousands raised their phones to the sky to capture the moment, followed by scattered applause.
For canny entrepreneurs, the Cycladic island's famous sunset can be a cash cow.
One company advertised more than 50 "flying dresses", which have long flowing trains, for up to 370 euros ($401), on posters around Oia for anyone who wishes to "feel like a Greek goddess" or spruce up selfies.
'Respect Oia'
But elsewhere in Oia's narrow streets, residents have put up signs urging visitors to respect their home.
"RESPECT... It's your holiday... but it's our home," read a purple sign from the Save Oia group.
Shaped by a volcanic eruption 3,600 years ago, Santorini's landscape is "unique", the mayor said, and "should not be harmed by new infrastructure".
Around a fifth of the island is currently occupied by buildings.
At the edge of the cliff, a myriad of swimming pools and jacuzzis highlight Santorini is also a pricey destination.
In 2023, 800 cruise ships brought some 1.3 million passengers, according to the Hellenic Ports Association.
Cruise ships "do a lot of harm to the island", said Chantal Metakides, a Belgian resident of Santorini for 26 years.
"When there are eight or nine ships pumping out smoke, you can see the layer of pollution in the caldera," she said.
Cruise ship limits
In June, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis floated the possibility of capping cruise ship arrivals to Greece's most popular islands.
"I think we'll do it next year," he told Bloomberg, noting that Santorini and tourist magnet Mykonos "are clearly suffering".
"There are people spending a lot of money to be on Santorini and they don’t want the island to be swamped," said the pro-business conservative leader, who was re-elected to a second four-year term last year.
In an AFP interview, Tourism Minister Olga Kefalogianni echoed this sentiment and said: "We must set quotas because it's impossible for an island such as Santorini... to have five cruise ships arriving at the same time."
Local officials have set a limit of 8,000 cruise boat passengers per day from next year.
But not all local operators agree.
Antonis Pagonis, head of Santorini's hoteliers association, believes better visitor flow management is part of the solution.
"It is not possible to have (on) a Monday, for example, 20 to 25,000 guests from the cruise ships, and the next day zero," he said.
Pagonis also argued that most of the congestion only affects parts of the island like the capital, Fira.
In the south of the island, the volcanic sand beaches are less crowded, even though it is high season in July.
'I'm in Türkiye
The modern tourism industry has also changed visitor behavior.
"I listened (to) people making a FaceTime call with the family, saying 'I'm in Türkiye," smiled tourist guide Kostas Sakavaras.
"They think that the church over there is a mosque because yesterday they were in Türkiye."
The veteran guide said the average tourist coming to the island has changed.
"Instagram has defined the way people choose the places to visit," he said, explaining everybody wants the perfect Instagram photo to confirm their expectations.