It seems like every day there’s a new report of fresh layoffs. There’s the whole gaming division at Microsoft, the entire staff at Sports Illustrated, the teardown of Pitchfork magazine, Okta layoffs, UPS layoffs, Alphabet layoffs, and I can go on and on and on. With January reportedly being the lowest hiring month, we seem to be entering the wild west of job markets. Jobs are evolving, tensions are high, and independence is on the rise. One place to look for opportunities is within creative work, the last frontier for AI as it tries to figure out why we even buy the things we like. Let’s take a peek into what the fashion world has been up to.
Western Gothic
Cowboy hats, western boots, jean jackets, bolo ties, leather goods, cow-pelted duffles, and speedy bags all strutted down the runway in Paris, Virginia as Louis Vuitton held their Men’s Fall-Winter 2024 show. Creative Director Pharrell Williams is looking to explore the American Frontier, but where did this idea come from?
Trendsetting today has become a mix of old-school hunches from the visionaries at the top (i.e. the Anna Wintour and Pharrells of the world) and new-age data analytics. Bloomberg reports how forecasters track credit card information—from online shopping, frequency of store visits and purchases—and lean heavily on consumer surveys. The economic outlook, political atmosphere and even the weather are taken into account. With Paris, Virginia, the Pinterest Predicts report for 2024, driven by user searches across Pinterest, had Western Gothic among a myriad of trends it says will dominate 2024:
Giddy up. There's a new home trend in town. Meet Western goth: your soon-to-be decor obsession that'll mix vintage Americana chic with deep, moody hues. Expect to see Gen Z and Boomers DIY in style with sultry touches, such as dark fringe and even darker paint. See you soon at the (gothic-inspired) saloon. - Pinterest Predicts
The growing search terms sourced include:
Western bedding ideas +310%
Vintage americana +145%
Country room ideas +125%
Western mirror +125%
Western gothic +145%
In classic chicken or the egg dilemma, it’s hard to gauge whether the idea emerged organically just from cultural interest first or whether it was influenced from behind the scenes using sentiment data. Probably a mix of both. While the use of data for projecting sales is nothing new, the question lies in how the future (and by future, I mean literally this year) will utilize AI in this strategy to further the execution of art in business.
Artificially Tendy
The ongoing consensus for AI in the workplace is mostly operational, giving white-collar workers productivity boosts working with data and analytics (or even replacing them). One area of work that seems to be fending off the robots is creative work, specifically fashion. BoF’s 2024 report for The State of Fashion reports that 73% of fashion executives say generative AI will be a priority for their businesses in 2024, but only 28% have tried using it in creative processes for design and product development. Real-world examples include luxury label Casablanca’s partnering with AI artists and their use of Midjourney, an AI image generator taking the design world by storm.
[Casablanca] enlisted Luke Nugent, a longtime fashion and art photographer who recently began creating AI editorials using the image generator Midjourney, and produced the Spring-Summer 2023 campaign for Casablanca’s “Futuro Optimisto” collection, marking the brand’s first steps into AI. The images are set in a Mexican landscape and are stylized to look more like hyperrealistic paintings than photographs. Grimes noted it’s meant to have a surreal quality. When they were designing the collection, which was inspired by a trip to Mexico, they were thinking of UFOs, space cowboys, the desert and nature. - What Really Went Into Casablanca’s AI-Generated Marketing Campaign, BoF
While the use of generative art is interesting, a lot of the technology in this space has not yet gone further than just a couple of pilot projects. One company highlighted in BoF’s report is looking to save designer time within their creative process:
AiDA (short for AI-based Interactive Design Assistant) reportedly can produce a dozen fashion templates within 10 seconds.233 The system uploads sketches, materials and colour palettes to a virtual mood board with the help of a tagging tool for accelerated product searches. AiDA then creates templates that designers can finesse and augment. Cala, a fashion supply chain interface that includes gen AI in its design tools, can help designers produce more than 100 sketches in a single day, according to co-founder Andrew Wyatt. - The State of Fashion 2024,
I’m a firm believer, at least as of right now, that no matter how good the generative art gets, creative work will always require a human touch and that in the future, curation is key.
Another avenue to think about is what data is being used to train the models. A term used alongside AI is “multimodal” which means the system can be trained with and use video, audio, speech, images, text, etc. Considering the value of the global social media influencer industry is reported to be $21B, I’m curious as to how all that content will be used to train AI, uploading thousands of TikTok videos showcasing get-ready-with-me style content. I just imagine feeding a model videos of Campbell Puckett (aka Pookie) and having it interpret what is even going on with her fire outfits.
But back to the frontier, there’s a bigger cultural conversation as to why the sentiments of westward expansion are suddenly at the top of everyone’s mind. Maybe it’s the nostalgia that comes with fantasizing about a simpler, but wilder time that was based entirely on the real ideas of land and opportunity as opposed to the cyber frontier controlled by big tech. Maybe leather just looks really cool.
Thank you
I’ve become obsessed with boots. I’m more of a uniform kinda guy (mostly because I’m lazy), so when I find a piece of clothing I like, I wear it to the ground. I currently have been wearing the same pair of Thursday Boots for the past 6 months+ nearly every day. How did I find these boots? On Instagram of course. I too have been sucked into the Western gothic trend and have always been a sucker for American nostalgia. But is that something the algorithm knows about me, or is it something that my friends also like, or is it a trend set in the ether by some corporate overlord think tank? I recently watched American Fiction, and one quote that stood out for me was this idea of serving the market what it wants. Does every piece of art need to be pretentious, or will the snobbery of it all keep the field from growing with new technology? As always, if you have any questions, want more explanations, or strongly disagree, comment below, follow me on Twitter (X), follow me on Threads, follow me on TikTok, or shoot me an email.
Disclaimer: These views are my own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of any organization with which I am affiliated with.