I Don't Like His Red Carpet Look

Umm, there’s a new stylist in the room, and he doesn’t care about the guest list, the personal taste of the celeb wearing a fit or really bothers himself with brand allegiance. “What’s trend,” you ask. Chuckles. He hardly bats an eye or should I say writes the code. This new stylist hasn’t necessarily panicked at any moment over the course of his experience backstage at couture. Nor has he watched Devil Wears Prada.

Meet the AI stylist, the new fren of Instagram hussars, who have dialled up their expert opinions from the confines of comments to recreation with the help of AI tools. Don’t understand why SRK’s Met Gala outfit is all black, let me share a supposedly better ideation of what would “suit him better”.

We’re talking about hyperreal outfit mockups on celebrities, red-carpet re-styling reels, generative lookbooks featuring clothes that don’t exist. Plagiarism is crying in the distant corner ‘cause everything is under the protective guise of creativity. It makes one wonder is creativity becoming a blanket word! But we can cross that bridge when it comes to it.

Forget editorial restraint or dress code and fashion no-nos that Cannes keep churning anew every passing year; the AI stylist serves you Rihanna in a chainmail sari at Cannes Film Festival and Zendaya draped in digitally rendered Mugler-meets-Murakami fantasy wear. Seriously, it’s fashion dreaming at scale!

But kitsch loves kitsch loves kitsch on socials, right? Users love it, secretly even those who loathe it right now. Why? Well, one, because AI isn’t replacing style, it’s refracting it. It collects centuries of fashion into a machine and says, ‘Now remix it for the feed, make it weird, make it hot, make it yada-yada-yada.’ And Voila! You get something out of the box that’s sometimes really appealing. Many a times, with 17 arms, no feet, a couple extra fingers, and teeth – even the devil is scared looking at those horribly morphed images.

Second, because fashion has always been about expression and taste is a muscle that is subjectively trained, the reality is bendable. Use of generative AI in aiding creative inputs in the world of fashion is still new but not an untrodden path. Designer Shivani Boruah, for instance, has used AI to prototype surreal, dreamlike concepts before translating them into wearable couture.

Remixing Aesthetics

Fashion editors may scoff at what the generative AI is doing with styled pieces, but this trend of endlessly customising fits is part of the internet culture’s obsession with remixing aesthetics. Remember Barbiecore meeting cyborg priestess?

Also, if we were to dig through the excess baggage of memes and random pictures, the trend coincides with the rise of those virtual influencers which we can’t tell apart from an avatar, a real model. Lil Miquela and Shudu, for instance, have been part of the virtual reality prompted not by studios or talent management or even ateliers, its prompts, plugins and lot of machine learning models.

Even fashion schools for that matter are now experimenting with AI co-design tools alongside patternmaking and other traditional methods of designing. So, its sort of creation of this creative literacy which makes use of code like cloth, pushing and provoking the traditional notion of styling and dressmaking.

But what's up with these rising crops of AI-powered styling apps. What has happened to dressing up as per your mood and instinct. These tools are like Instagram filters -bubbles for fast fashion feeds, offering mood-board-like interfaces that adapt to user preferences.

Styling has also been deliciously unhinged so maybe the next season looks won’t come from Paris or Milan but from a prompt. Today, we see dozens of followers engaging with IG accounts and digital creator pages including @ai_fashion_style, @future_fits where AI restyles archival looks on contemporary celebrities with eerie precision or create something unique. These posts rack up shares and saves although only ‘reinterpretations’ of the original design. (Some are off the roof, too!)

Although, many unreal in the best way—perfectly tailored, provocatively edgy and clearly unburdened by the fabric budget or its ability to move like that, the AI stylist is slowly becoming internet’s post-aesthetic mood. It’s a glitch that’s a boon and a bane.