How AI, emerging tech is showing up at fashion week

16 Feb 2025

At the height of digital fashion’s hype cycle, brands made big bets on emerging tech on the runway. Dauphinette debuted NFC-chipped nails, Christian Louboutin issued NFTs as access passes, and Tommy Hilfiger went full-throttle with its Web3 experiment at New York Fashion Week for Fall 2022.

Then came the bust. First-generation digital fashion startups shuttered, the NFT market cooled, and as luxury faced a broader economic slowdown, brands quietly retreated from costly tech investments.

As Web3 excitement waned, the focus shifted back to Web2 platforms. Brands skirted around innovation, instead choosing to leverage Instagram broadcast channels, optimize TikTok livestreams, and refine existing digital strategies where audiences already comfortably reside.

But now, as the Fall 2025 fashion season unfolds, early adopters are cautiously re-engaging with emerging tech — this time with a more considered, integration-first approach.

Viktor & Rolf #
At Paris Couture Week, Viktor & Rolf was inspired by the endless possibilities of prompts and digital experimentation, choosing to reinterpret a single outfit — a trench coat, white shirt, and blue trousers all made from silk gazar — across 24 different looks.

Accompanying the clothes was an AI-generated voice, detailing each ensemble in a vaguely robotic French accent.

Technology has been making its presence felt in new, more considered ways on the couture fashion week calendar, such as Schiaparelli’s use of obsolete offcuts last year. It makes sense: the couture schedule has long been a space for brands to push creative boundaries and experiment with storytelling in ways that the ready-to-wear calendar doesn’t always allow.

Viktor & Rolf’s approach this season spoke to AI’s wider role in fashion, where machine learning and generative tools are still finding their place in an industry divided by opinion.

Seoul Fashion Week #
Meanwhile, at Seoul Fashion Week, which ran from February 6-10, AI was explored in a different way.

Celebrating its 25th anniversary, the event spotlighted designers pushing both sustainability and innovation. Hannah Shin’s “Cosmogonie” collection combined 3D printing with traditional tailoring, producing architectural silhouettes that felt both futuristic and functional. The standout moment featured a model wearing the WalkON Suit, a robotic exoskeleton developed by KAIST for individuals with paraplegia — an example of fashion’s growing intersection with assistive technology.

Seoul Fashion Week is quietly setting the pace for fashion’s tech evolution, while Western runways find themselves bogged down in an era overrun with quiet luxury facsimiles.

Seoul Fashion Week has also become a testbed for innovation, attracting major tech players eager to integrate digital fashion into everyday wear. Last year, LG debuted its Stretchable Display technology on garments and accessories designed by Youn-Hee Park and Chung-Chung Lee. This season, Samsung launched its “Galaxy Studio Fashion” experience at DDP Plaza, showcasing AI-powered digital fashion tools that had been integrated into Samsung devices.

Coperni #
And there’s more innovation to come. At the upcoming Paris Fashion Week circuit, Coperni will host a LAN-inspired party — where attendees bring their gaming consoles to a shared physical location and connect them through a local network to play multiplayer video games — tapping into the gaming community and the growing commercial influence of livestreamers.

Fashion’s engagement with high-profile gamers has been deepening in recent years. As gamers transition from underground streamers to global influencers, brands are taking note of their growing cultural sway, particularly among younger consumers, and their increasing spending power.

For Coperni, a brand that has recently built its reputation on boundary-pushing tech moments, the challenge lies in striking a balance between spectacle and strategy. Its latest fashion week endeavor will serve as a litmus test. Can the brand continue to harness innovation in a way that feels purposeful rather than performative? Stay tuned.