The Campaign

We chose an unexpected and fickle industry for IBM Watson to work in: fashion. Using visual recognition, Watson analyzed over 500,000 images from fashion archives and photos from prominent Instagram users to forecast next season's popular colours and styles. His insights helped Jason Grech, an Australian fashion designer to design the world’s first cognitive couture collection. The dresses were launched at the opening gala of Melbourne Spring Fashion Week, showcasing how an A.I. could help design a collection of couture dresses. ‘The Cognitive Collection’, brings together the artistic vision of a fashion designer and the power of IBM Watson, under pressure, to create the world’s first AI-enhanced couture collection.

Creative Execution

We used IBM Watson, an AI system to turn millions of data points into 12 beautiful couture dresses. We created two cognitive tools specifically for fashion industry. The Zeitgeist Tool uses Visual Recognition technology to analyse over 500,000 images from 10 years of fashion archives and social platforms to give insights on trending colours, styles and fabrics. The Visual Discovery Tool matches inspiration inputs like Architectural shapes and structures with patterns and silhouettes in historic fashion runway images, to provide inspiration for the new designs that helped Jason Grech create the World’s first cognitive collection.

We accelerated Jason’s process by 600% - down from 28 days to just 4 days. From the projected data, Jason was able to develop the world’s first cognitive collection comprising 12 stunning couture dresses. He incorporated colours and fabrics that he had never used before, such as pastels, which became his best-selling items. In the process, Watson impressed the tough and highly subjective fashion industry – and demonstrated that IBM’s technology is real-world ready for any business. We also capture the attention of one of the premier fashion institutions Vogue Italy who ran a feature article called ‘Cognitive Computing supports fashion designer- Watson is the Artificial Intelligence platform from IBM that also supports creative decision making’ showcasing how IBM efforts are transforming the industry. And finally, celebrities across Australia are lining up to wear dresses designed by Jason Grech + IBM Watson.

How do you transform cold and hard data into warm and soft fabric? Well that’s what we actually did. We turned millions of data points into 12 beautiful couture dresses. And used a breakthrough AI technology to do it. IBM Watson, an AI system analyzed over 500,000 images from 10 years of fashion archives and social platforms to give insights on colours, styles and fabrics that will trend next season and helped Jason Grech create the World’s first cognitive collection. It is the first time a human and a machine collaborate to create a collection of couture dresses.