At TIME100 Impact Dinner, Leaders Discuss AI and the Future of Fashion

On Wednesday, leaders in business, art, fashion, and technology gathered on the 102nd floor of New York’s One World Trade Center for a TIME100 Impact Dinner. The event orbited around a panel, moderated by TIME’s editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs, that discussed how AI could shape the future of fashion—particularly from a customer’s perspective. The panelists were David Lauren, chief branding and innovation officer for Ralph Lauren, which sponsored the event; Shelley Bransten, corporate vice president, worldwide industry solutions, at Microsoft, which also sponsored the event; and artist and researcher Sougwen Chung, who founded Scilicet, a studio exploring human and non-human collaboration. In September, Ralph Lauren (in partnership with Microsoft) released “Ask Ralph,” which it bills as an “AI-powered conversational shopping experience.” The AI tool, which sits within the Ralph Lauren mobile app, provides customers with stylistic inspiration by generating “shoppable visual laydowns of complete outfits, personalized to a user’s prompts, from across available inventory.” It’s one example of a growing trend of businesses using AI to offer consumers personalized experiences. “Technology for technology’s sake is a fool’s errand,” said Bransten, who worked with Ralph Lauren to develop Ask Ralph. “The most important piece was the partnership piece,” she said. Microsoft and Ralph Lauren first collaborated 25 years ago, launching one of the industry’s first e-commerce platforms. Even then, the focus was on how digital experiences could recreate what makes a physical store special. Bransten recounts meeting with David and Ralph Lauren at the time, prepared with slides. She recalls they said “we’re going to take you to our store and you’re going to meet our sales associates, you’re going to watch our customers shop, and you’re going to feel our product.” The message: technology should be applied to enhance one’s experience of the brand, not as an end in itself. “When we started, we realized that the experience inside of a store is what makes it special,” said David Lauren at the TIME event. “Clothes are just clothes. What we try to do is create a movie, an experience with how you wear the clothes, the context that you wear the clothes, the world that inspires you.” To build that context online, Lauren says they turn to voices and stories. “So when you’re reading about a pair of old jeans, there’s a story about an old barn that maybe inspired those jeans. And when you’re reading about the look of that woman, maybe there’s an interview with a celebrity or a personality who literally lives out the story that inspired us,” he said. For Lauren, the idea for their current AI tool began 25 years ago. “It has had iterations over the years, but we finally found the right marriage with the right technology to bring an age-old question to life,” he said. “Could technology help you get dressed in the morning? Could you do it in a way that is simple enough that you won’t feel overwhelmed?” Lauren noted that they plan to further develop their AI services over time. Chung brought a broader perspective. “These systems are creative catalysts,” they said. “It’s a different way to engage with the creative process of picking out what to wear, of expressing yourself. And I think it can be the start of a really interesting dialogue between the customers and the model.” For almost 11 years, Chung has been collaborating with robotic systems of their own creation, as a way of better understanding and engaging with their own creativity. “It’s a different type of sculpting of data and technology, but I think it’s one that opens up a really vital and contemporary conversation about how we feed back to these systems,” they said, considering how AI systems could be applied to fashion.  For Bransten, who has experience across retail, fashion, and enterprise technology, Ralph Lauren’s clarity of vision distinguished them from their peers. She described the Ask Ralph app as “a shot heard around the world,” inspiring the industry. “I think having both that clear vision of what you want to deliver, as well as the excitement and the culture to experiment,” she said, “has changed things in the conversation a lot.” TIME100 Impact Dinner: The Future of Fashion—AI Innovations Driving Creativity and Consumer Experience was presented by Microsoft and Ralph Lauren.