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.

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.

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.

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. 

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