Is there room for AI in luxury fashion?

Creative sentiment toward AI right now is not exactly warm and fuzzy. As author Joanna Maciejewska’s widely memed quote goes, “I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so I can do laundry and dishes.” The subject, of course, is a heavily debated one: AI’s ‘dilution’ of art, the greatest marker of human experience and time. But another idea it opens up, particularly in the context of luxury fashion campaigns, is what the use of AI art signals—and the tenor of brands likely to use it.

Valentino’s latest campaign called The Valentino Garavani DeVain Digital Creative Project featured the works of nine experimental artists—included visuals created using AI. One visual, in particular, a motion graphic by the production house Enter The Void which featured models linking arms to form the signature Valentino ‘V’ logo, rolling and unfurling amidst a mass of limbs and curly hair and floating, floral-beaded baguette bags, was met with instant backlash from fans who held the luxury maison to ‘higher’ standards. Click on the comments section, and it’s clear: “Call me a hater, but this feels cheap and not on brand”; “Didn’t think the AI slop on my feed would be coming from Valentino”; “Love Valentino, but this is a cheap, tacky AI mess”; and lastly, “AI does not match luxury and craftsmanship.”

It’s a question that’s important to ask at this juncture. Are brands, that have posited themselves as bastions of crafted couture and luxury fashion, defying their own DNA by using AI? The reason an AI campaign might feel like a more organic fit with a fast-fashion brand is that they perhaps seem to springboard off the same platform—cheaper, quicker, mass-produced. But when a luxury fashion brand chooses to use AI for its creative visuals, there's a chance for it to be perceived as either try-hard or inauthentic, simply because it lacks the human-led creative process, the craftsmanship, that makes up the bedrock of luxury fashion.

Sumit Vasisth, creative director at Ogilvy, has led many campaigns through his career and points out that luxury storytelling must be exact. “From a creative director’s lens, luxury has always demanded perfection—not just in product, but in the craft behind the image. Traditionally, that perfection comes from human mastery, storytelling, and emotional detail.” He does believe that “distortion has become the new realism”. “The avant garde often challenges what ‘luxury’ looks like. So, while AI may feel contradictory to conventional luxury codes, it is also pushing the category toward new forms of expression.”

Photographer Pranoy Sarkar thinks the two are incomparable. “I don’t think AI replaces photography or film. Any medium can look good if it’s used thoughtfully, and any medium can look cheap if it isn’t. It’s less about the technology and more about the intention and craft behind it.” Vasisth agrees. “Intent and execution determine its impact. When AI is used purely as a cost-cutting shortcut, audiences feel the loss of artistry. When it’s used to extend imagination, provoke emotion, or rethink beauty, it can become a powerful tool.”

Vasisth’s opinion on the Valentino backlash is split in. “Audiences will always have strong, diverse reactions, and that’s valid. Personally, I neither fully agree nor disagree with the backlash. To me, what Valentino attempted feels like a Baroque moment in the digital age. Just as Renaissance perfection eventually gave way to Baroque experimentation—layered, exaggerated, breaking the visual form, distorted, and emotionally provocative—today’s creative landscape is shifting from polished realism to bold abstraction. When perfection becomes predictable, the absurd becomes the new way to break visual clutter. AI is part of that cycle.”

AI should be seen as a new creative medium, in Sarkar’s view. “Digital once threatened film, then phone cameras made photography accessible to everyone, and now film photography is having a revival. These things end up coexisting. Right now, the level of control and authorship a photographer has while creating an image or film is still very different from AI. And yet, there are things traditional photography or film can’t achieve, and AI can. So, instead of treating AI like competition or comparing AI films to what a ‘real’ film would have looked like, it feels more interesting to look at it as a different visual language with its own possibilities.”

Sarkar’s perspective isn’t popular amongst creatives, but it is valid. There’s no doubt AI is still in its teething phase, and the space still has ethical and aesthetic issues that desperately need to be worked out. The Studio Ghibli debacle is exactly why creators of art, photography and cinema treat AI like the enemy, but while there is definitely some essence of evil in the AI mix, it is impossible to ignore it is growing into an art form in its own right.

Take AI artists who are perfecting the form for instance. In an episode of Recho Omondi’s The Cutting Room Floor, the fashion designer and podcaster mentions the work of Sybille de Saint Louvent, Phillippe Matta, and W(AI)RK Studio as examples of artists that are using AI to create high-quality fashion visuals. A look deeper into their work highlights what the three creative directors and studios have in common—an understanding of clean aesthetics and ‘expensive’ (not opulent) imagery, and the ability to achieve it.

What’s clear is that, in its current form, most AI visuals cannot successfully carry the message a luxury fashion brand wants to send. But whether that has to do with the ethics of it or this point in the technology’s journey remains to be seen. Sarkar only sees it growing to become “more refined”. “AI will evolve, and brands will evolve in how they use it. Eventually it will settle into its own space.” Vasisth can’t speak for how it will grow but hopes it will be mindful. “I don’t think we can predict what AI is incapable of; the right question is what it can evolve into,” he says. “If brands are thoughtful with it, AI can add meaning to luxury rather than remove it.”