The brainchild of Cyril Foiret, Maison Meta is behind some of the world’s first AI-generated fashion campaigns and collections. Across global brands like Moncler Genius, REVOLVE, and Pangaia, the creative studio is pioneering a new phase of fashion tech and the way brands interact with an increasingly digital clientele. In April, it launched AI Fashion Week at New York’s Spring Studios, showcasing selected submissions from 133 digital artists and designers worldwide.
Maison Meta invited the public to take part by voting for the collections they liked the best on its website.
Image courtesy of Alena Stepanova
For some participating designers, the competition was an opportunity to explore sci-fi couture. Futuristic silhouettes and techy fabrics were paired with dystopian makeup looks, set within a desert or a runway underwater. Alena Stepanova and other designers instead presented intricate ready-to-wear garments, focusing on stacked layers, detailed knitwear and embroidery.
Image courtesy of Rachel Koukal
Rachel Koukal highlighted diversity in her collection ‘Soft Apocalypse’. In a series of images, she featured a culturally-diverse group of mostly curvy models, walking amidst a backdrop of sand dune, clad in otherworldly shapes and materials. In an interview with Vogue Business, Koukal explained that she wanted to create a size and body-type inclusive collection, one that she felt was lacking in the fashion industry. With MidJourney, an AI software allowing designers to prompt their creations through text, Koukal was able to feed her own images and re-prompt them to give her any imagined body she wanted, as well as new designs.
Image courtesy of Anya Klyueva
This week, Maison Meta unveiled the top 10 AIFW finalists, including Anya Klyueva and Ope, who will be judged by a panel of industry experts that includes Dame Pat McGrath, Vogue Japan’s head of editorial content, Tiffany Godoy, Céline casting director, Natalie Hazzout, and Erika Wykes-Sneyd of the Adidas Studio Web3, among others. The chosen three winners will then have their AI-generated designs produced and sold by REVOLVE for the real world.
While still nascent, it seems that the future of fashion will be increasingly intertwined with generative AI, paving the way for new creative endeavours and global collaboration. Physical runway shows in future seasons are currently in the works for Maison Meta’s creative team, with products designed from previous collections said to be going into production. Maison Meta is also working on an incubator programme with REVOLVE to help designers launch their brands.
This April, Aries opened its first ever store in Soho, London. Designed in-house and in collaboration with Brinkworth and Wilson Brothers, the Aries Soho store will showcase Aries in-line collections in full for the first time in bricks and mortar and will function as a curated concept store and art space.
Photo courtesy of Aries
The store will feature exclusive brand collaborations, brought to life with installation pop-ups, as well as a rotating concept trading with collaborators, friends and like-minded international partners, from clothing and music to books and art, allowing visitors to immerse themselves into the Aries world.
With its own entrance on Bridle Lane, Parisian-born coffee shop Paperboy will also open its first official outpost in London, exclusively serving the brand’s own signature sandwiches and coffees, in collaboration with Aries and Dark Arts Coffee.
It’s also announced that the store will be housing exhibitions, alongside seasonal collections and store exclusives. Its rails will be rotating between pop-ups by South London’s leading vintage re-sell brand, JerksTM and London-based luxury unisex jewellery brand, Bunney.
Photo courtesy of Aries
Founded by Italian-born Sofia Prantera of Silas and Holmes fame, Aries was born out of an ongoing love of trash culture, outsider art, graphics and illustration. Since graduating from Central Saint Martins in the early ‘90s, Sofia has been an integral part of the skate and streetwear community for over 25 years with three successful brands under her belt.
Photo courtesy of Aries
The Aries Soho store officially opened its doors Monday 17th April 2023.
Dior has announced Mumbai’s Gateway of India as the location of the fashion house’s Pre-Fall 2023 presentation on March 30. This will be the first time a European luxury maison stages an official calendar show in India. As part of Creative Director Maria Grazia Chiuri’s commitment to support and collaborate with Mumbai-based talent, the collection will feature pieces embellished with intricate embroidery by Chanakya, an atelier and craftsmanship school for women in Mumbai.
The show plays tribute to the visionary spirit of Christian Dior and his successors who had a profound admiration for India. As the first-ever female creative director of Dior, Chiuri’s partnership with Chanakya evolves the brand’s feminine identity and values. The non-profit organisation was founded by Monica Shah and Karishma Swali and seeks to empower female artisans from low-income backgrounds with skills that enable them to earn a livelihood within the fashion industry -an ethos which resonates strongly with the feminist message that Chiuri has actively pushed forth through collaborations with female craftspeople, image-makers and artists within the fashion industry.
Chiuri wrote in an Instagram post: “It was through this relationship with Chanakya that I was able to learn so much about the artisanal embroidery techniques, which are still found in each and every Indian region, and the unique ability of the Chanakya Atelier to put them in dialogue with the fashion industry.”
Under Chiuri’s wing, the presentation will showcase India’s rich technical knowledge within the field of craft and fashion. And with the luxury sector in India expected to explode over the next decade, the country is quickly becoming a destination for global brands looking to expand their footprint.
The collection will be available in stores from late April, featuring an array of evening coats, silk dresses and sari-inspired skirts.
The CHANEL Fall-Winter 2023/24 Ready-To-Wear Collection pays tribute to the brand’s iconic white camellia motif. Imagined by Virginia Viard, this season is described to be afloat with asymmetrical silhouettes traversed by the camellia motifs, an eternal code of the brand.
The show took place in Paris’s Grand Palais Éphémère. At its centre, a larger-than-life white camellia and cinematic images of Japanese actress and House Ambassador Nana Komatsu, a spectacle directed by Inez and Vinnodh.
Komatsu evolves within a set inspired by William Klein’s Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?, “It’s the idea of a Japanese woman in Paris, with a spirit of light-heartedness and freedom,” tells Inez and Vinnodh. “In the way she moves in the video there is a sense of wonder, a sense of displacement and belonging.”
As precise as it is profound, the makeup palette mirrored the collection. Featuring black, white and pink tones with washes of silver on the eyelids and layers of mascara on bottom and top lashes for a fluttery effect. On the lips, nude touches of rouge to complement a sheer complexion with a matte finish.
Image courtesy of CHANEL
Virginie Viard had intended for the collection to be delicate and in motion. “The energy of the merry-go-round of wooden horses that provides the setting for Inez & Vinoodh’s film, with actress Nana Komatsu as the heroine, gave me the idea for the Bermuda short suits and the asymmetries,” she reveals.
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