Watch Fashioning Fiction 2023: A.I. Expanding the Narrative of Fashion Photography | PhotoVogue Festival 2023: What Makes Us Human? Image in the Age of A.I.

[attendees applaud loudly] [Chiara speaks faintly]
Can I sit here?
Thank you so much.
Hi, Margaret, can you hear us?
Hi. Yes, I can hear you. Hi, Margaret.
Welcome. Thank you so much for being here.
I’m really looking forward for this talk.
And I hope we’re gonna go a little bit in deep
into the world of AI applied to fashion photography,
fashion design, and also in the editorial business.
The first question that I want to ask everybody
is regards the title.
So, the title reference a very famous show
that was done at the MoMA in New York
about the narrative shift
that happened in fashion photography in the nineties.
So, I would love to know,
what do you envision in like what kind of narrative shifts
and you know, enhancement will AI bring
to the world of fashion storytelling?
Maybe Bryan, you can start
in terms like from an artist’s point of view.
And then, maybe,
Margaret, you can dwelve a little bit into a editorial one.
And Cyril of course, also, the artistic one.
Yeah, for me, I feel like
sometimes it’s very hard to communicate my ideas.
And I think sometimes what’s really easy
and digestible is returning to things that we know,
film, photography, the work of like classic photographers,
which I love as well.
But I feel like AI really makes things like fantasy
much more accessible.
Like, I said before, it’s kind of like,
you now can generate an image in like 15 seconds,
and you can show a client, This is what I want to do.
And so, if you can do that, then, there’s gonna be a shift
because now anyone can present that.
Your wildest ideas are digestible now.
So, that’s the value I think AI is bringing to fashion.
What do you think? I totally agree.
Oh, sorry I was. [chuckles]
No, no, all good.
I was just gonna say I totally agree.
And in some way, I think it distinguishes more
the different levels and types of artists.
So, for example, when you think about the evolution
of fashion as in product,
the shift from kind of craftsmanship
and couture over to ready-to-wear.
It made the handcrafted things
and things with human touch much more valuable.
So, I think the view is really from
an image creation standpoint.
AI in some way will become a mass product
and a norm of like a visual language.
And then, the human element on top of that,
whether it’s, you know, film, photography
or that final 20% of a human touch.
Or that human imperfection
will become a kind of luxury product in my view.
Yeah, I think AI is like this tool
that you can really push,
and when you are a photographer or a creative director,
you can really like open somewhere like you say,
like fantasy, and really, push all type of fashion.
It’s amazing.
Yeah, I mean, from my point of view,
I think that also the accessibility of the tool
is something that it’s really important.
We’re going more and more towards the democratization
of everything.
[device dings] Oh, my God, I’m so sorry.
Sorry, sorry.
So, the fact that this is something
that it’s incredibly accessible,
and will make some kind of artistic endeavor easily,
not easily, but achievable for everybody, you know,
in a world in which budget are shrinking,
and those kind of like crazy sets that,
you know, from the good old times
might not be possible anymore.
This will mean, I think, that it will really liberate
a certain kind of creativity instead of tilting it.
What do you think?
I 100% agree.
And with what Margaret said
about the human touch being valued more,
that’s something that I truly believe,
Because AI needs humanity.
Without it, AI is just a library of things
we’ve already done.
So, you have to feed it.
Like, AI can open up new ways of thinking about art.
Like, when I walked through the museum,
I saw things that I maybe didn’t imagine before, like truly.
And I think, you know, there’s always been that feeling
of like, everything’s been done before,
but you can’t say that.
Like, you can’t go around saying that
when there are new things in that exhibition,
you haven’t seen things like that before.
So, AI is a way to get us further in image-making
and it’s not an enemy.
It needs us way more than we need it actually,
because it’s just history.
Yeah, with AI,
you can really push your creativity to another level.
Those tools, those workflow you can create,
you can really set all,
you have this control net extension
where you can actually create your position.
You have your lighting,
you can control pretty much everything you want.
So, everything you have in your head,
you can have it like realized with AI.
It’s really amazing.
I also think that people,
we’re at such an early stage of AI visual development
that sometimes it’s hard
to imagine how infinite the possibilities are.
I think, let me try and share my screen
so you guys can see kind of the distinction.
I don’t know if you guys can see that.
[Chiara] Yes.
So, for Vogue China, obviously,
we’re like fairly aggressive with how we experiment
in the virtual and digital visual space.
Obviously, we’ve worked with Bryan
many times before as well.
But I think this page is some of the things that we’ve done
from a virtual standpoint.
And that requires, you know, someone like Bryan
to fully ideate something,
and exists within the finite mind of the artist.
Whereas, for instance, our first AI experimentation
was with our August issue this year.
And the process was totally different.
We had no idea what it was gonna look like.
And Truong, who’s our amazing cover model was kind
of doing movements in a studio basically just by imagination
with the artists that we worked with.
But the story necessarily kind of came together
perhaps not as cohesively,
but much more boundless in the way that
we approached the visuals in the end.
And it was more an open conversation
as opposed to an authoritative kind of one way statement.
And then, another artist that we’ve worked with a lot
is Heather Wang, who’s kind of a Chinese artist,
digital artist who’s worked a lot with AI.
And it still requires that human element,
you can see that we’re still live photographing models
and live photographing real fashion,
but leveraging this technology to amplify stories around it.
Congratulations, this looked really amazing.
I mean, and I think that what you showed us really,
it’s a glimpse into the future of how a magazine
will become, you know, the kind of center around many,
many activation that can be done.
And I don’t think that the print will lose the power.
It just will become another language
with many other languages
that will basically really free some kind of creativity
that it’s almost impossible.
And I think that in a way,
right now we are in this transitional period
in which we don’t have full control of the tools,
but it’s actually quite interesting.
I mean, I want to also to ask you,
how much the mistakes and the glitches of the AI you know,
are hindering creativity or they are enhancing it for you?
They’re the best part.
They’re the part that I can’t think of myself.
‘Cause, I know what’s in my brain,
I can communicate what’s in my brain.
But with AI, when it fucks up,
that’s the most interesting part, right?
It’s like, Okay, why is there like a ship
coming outta someone’s head?
Wait, maybe we should do that.
Maybe we should do that in the final picture. You know?
Yeah, you can really use like the glitches
and those AI bugs to potentially like,
be a lot more artistic.
Like, wow, like, AI did create that.
Like, it’s pretty amazing.
And in a- I think it’s also.
Sorry, there is a little delay.
I’m so sorry.
Oh, please. No, not at all.
I was only gonna say that it is such an accelerator
of productivity as well.
I think sometimes you think of AI in creative spaces
as you know, this fear or tension
of kind of the human creative output
versus a machine creative output.
But aside from what the guys have already said,
it’s also a productivity tool
that increases your productivity so that you have more space
to be able to actually imagine and be creative.
And I think, you know,
we spoke with John Galliano about this
on over China podcast recently.
And he was like, It’s never going to replace
the way that I think,
but the fact that it can react to some prompts
that have come out of my brain, it actually helps me more
effectively distill down what I don’t want.
Right? It’s like a faster process of elimination in a way.
Rather than this kind of open-ended experimentation.
Yeah, I mean, and I think that
the prompts part is also a big kind
of like self-awareness tool for artists
because you really need to hone what you want to achieve.
And in that process, it becomes maybe more clear
for yourself what you actually want in your work.
Because like, from my curatorial point of view,
to be honest, the only 90% of the interesting AI work
has always come from somebody that either
had already an artistic practice or that had a very,
like, was very proficient in visual language.
Like, you need to have a vision to produce something
that it’s really interesting and it’s not,
I 100% agree because think about what a photographer is,
we don’t even set up our own lighting.
We have assistants to do that for us.
What a photographer trains himself with is references,
what movies do we watch?
What music do we watch? What video games do we play?
Communicating with AI, if you’re able to get
something out of it that is something that you want,
it’s like communicating with like a German art director.
You literally have to explain the fuck outta yourself
for it to make sense.
So, if you can communicate with AI
you can be doing whatever you want.
Anyone can be any kind of photographer.
Some people just want to shoot against a white wall.
Hey, that’s cool.
Some people wanna do this full Tim Walker thing,
that’s cool too.
But it’s all about communication,
that’s what photography is.
Yeah, I mean, prompt engineering is very interesting.
You have like a lot of people that are actually
using AI tools to create their prompt.
So, they’re going to teach charge ChatGPT
how me Midjourney works, and give them reference,
and then, ChatGPT creates the prompt for them.
So, it starts from writing,
but you also can give visual reference, you have all those.
It’s an amazing tool.
Yeah, I mean, I think you touched something
that it’s really important the fact,
and that might be something that maybe people that
are not working in the fashion photography business
are not really aware,
but it’s always a teamwork.
Like, producing a fashion shoot,
producing a magazine is never a one man’s job.
You need to have the vision for sure.
But like it’s a crew, it’s a team job.
So, in a way AI is just,
I see it as another member of the team in a way.
[Bryan] Absolutely.
I was also wondering in, maybe, not so distant future,
where we are gonna actually have much more control.
What do you think about the ethical implication
of like for example, you know, shooting a model
that it’s been AI generated and doesn’t exist,
or a model that has been scanned,
and it’s now a AI for hire model?
And what that can mean for the whole industry
in terms of job.
We just saw what happened with the actors in the US, so.
I guess, for myself, I’ve done work with CGI models
before with scanning and everything,
and there’s still really nothing better than having the real
model there reacting to things, doing all that.
I think even if AI goes so far,
I would always want a real human model there.
I think CGI is great for a lot of different reasons.
Like, for something like if you wanna do a film
in Unreal Engine, having a CGI model is so cheap and like,
so easy to integrate in that world
’cause you don’t have to deal with like bad green screening
or anything like that.
But with photography, the joy of photography
is the interaction between photographer, team, and model.
That is why I enjoy fashion photography.
And on kind of a side note, I feel like when AI came out
there was a lot of fear amongst my friends,
kind of where they were just like,
Bryan, like you should be kind of worried about this.
And I was kind of worried about it
because my work is the easiest thing to replace with AI,
and quite frankly, the opposite has happened
where the humanity that I bring to the table,
that is what I think makes my work more powerful now.
And so, in just my opinion,
I would never want to replace the model.
Yeah, they will always have like fashion models,
and big campaign photographers
will always want to work with like the human.
But agencies, model agencies are actually looking
into potentially develop their offering as like AI version.
And they’re looking to have like their model
into a AI version.
What do you think, Margaret?
You know, I think it depends what your KPIs are, right?
So, in ecosystems where the goal is efficiency, conversion,
so, areas like E-commerce for example,
I think those kinds of talent image generators
are gonna be much more easily replaced by AI
in the way that they’re using it for customer service,
personal shopping, and things like that.
And we’re already kind of seeing that.
Whereas, I mean, at least from a Vogue perspective,
we’re obviously kind of looking at culture more broadly
through a lens of fashion.
And to my earlier point around what is mass AI
as kind of the commonly seen mass product
where it’s so easy for anybody to generate image like that.
Vogue stands kind of more in the luxury space
or more as an elevated conversation.
And what Bryan referenced as, you know, the kind of soulful,
and more honest interaction between a creator,
and the subject is always gonna be incredibly important.
And I think that the human imperfection
or the very particular artist’s point of view
on a high standard model, for instance,
is gonna be something that’s never gonna leave Vogue, right?
I also was wondering in terms of,
so, we saw this especially during the pandemics,
and now, we are seeing it more and more,
the idea of producing clothes that exist only virtually.
What do you think about that?
Like, how is that gonna impact the industry?
And just even a little bit,
why would we want to have just a virtual clothes outfit?
I guess, for me, sometimes,
I struggle with how it could be integrated in the real world
or even if that’s the goal.
‘Cause, it’s very cool to look at…
And honestly, those clothes can exist in the real world.
You know, like designers like Iris Van Herpen
they make clothes that are,
and a lot of those designers are inspired by her.
So, it’s very much possible.
I just, for me,
I don’t know how to translate
that to real world use myself, personally.
I think it looks amazing in still images,
but that’s different than seeing someone
walk down the street, in my opinion.
Yeah, so, for us, we doing the AI Fashion Week
where it’s like an open competition.
And from this, we have the winners,
we actually create the collection.
So, we go from live from AI directly
to create the collection.
So, there’s like this new process to go through
where you have to create the pattern-making,
and everything, and then, going to the full-on production.
So, yeah. Yeah, very. Amazing.
Yeah, like the opposite basical way.
Yeah. So, and these
are also available to be purchased now?
Yeah. Because the winner
of the AI Fashion Week.
Yeah. Basically, creates something
with AI, and you’re giving it like,
you’re producing it in the real world,
which is quite cool. Yeah, exactly.
So, the first season was three winners,
which we went into production with Revolve.
And it was quite a bit of process.
Most of them were not actually working
in the fashion industry.
So, and we produced the collection,
it was for sale.
We opened this fashion tech incubators
where we are trying to launch them,
and it’s like a competition really, like,
where everyone that plays with the AI tools
and Midjourney can then win potentially,
and create their collections.
Very, yeah. Yeah. Oh, sorry.
And Margaret, from an editorial point of view
in which in the end,
apart from the huge creative part, you also,
in a magazine have to cover some credits
and work with actual real clothes.
What is the extra value or the possibilities that you see
in using clothes that exist only virtually?
I guess there’s two elements, right?
Like, one angle of it is having virtual artists
or digital fashion creators.
So, actually, we launched
our Vogue China Fashion Fund this year,
and because in China we’re kind
of fourth-generation mobile video gaming territory, right?
So, there’s already a lot of virtual fashion designers
or virtual fashion adjacent artists
who only create virtual works.
And what they enjoy about it is that they’re not restricted
by real life limitations like gravity,
or you know, materials that would not be able to be used
for fashion, for instance.
I think that will open up a whole new territory
of fashion-centric creativity that isn’t limited
to tactile product.
And then, the second element of it
is more so from an access and exclusivity standpoint.
So, this idea of digital twins,
this is obviously not items that would only exist
in the digital world necessarily,
but for all of your physical products to have digital twins
more associated with blockchain.
And maybe, there are exclusive skews
that exist only in the digital world as a way for,
it’s not so much about the fashion product itself,
in my view in the future,
it’s more about what does that ownership of this
quote-unquote virtual fashion art piece provides you,
you know, what kind of exclusivity does it give you
or access does it give you as a kind of token.
A theoretical definition of NFT, I suppose.
So, I think it’ll be interesting to see where, you know,
fashion is really jumping on AI in a way
that fashion was not able to figure out NFT or blockchain.
And so, it’ll be interesting to see in the next five years
how those worlds start to collide.
Thanks. Actually, I mean, to me.
The part that is really interesting about this,
and it’s also also interesting about fashion in general,
is the identity building part.
Because I think that in a way we are all,
even if we are not really aware,
like, building up online identities,
we don’t need to go to Fortnite or to wear skin.
We’re actually doing it just by our social media presence.
And in a way, this is really expand the identity building
possibilities in boundless way.
And we see it with the video gaming.
But I’m quite sure that AI and you know,
virtual fashion will really
expand the way we present ourselves to the world.
What do you think about this?
I think that’s totally true
because like I wanna look like a video game character.
Like, when I look at character designs,
I think it’s so limitless.
And like, I wanted to be a character designer
when I was younger,
but I like couldn’t stop drawing like anime proportions.
So, like when I went to college,
and I could only draw like one woman
with like hair covering her hair, and like huge breasts.
Like, my teacher was like, You can’t do this.
But like that has always been a source of inspiration for me
because I think video game characters look amazing.
And then, there’s a lot of designers that make clothes
that are video gamey.
Like, Dionne Lee makes clothes for video game characters.
John Galliano. Like, it feeds into it so much.
Sailor Moon wore Christian Lacroix,
like that was it, you know?
So, I think it’s amazing
for people’s identity to free that up.
And also, just like someone
who doesn’t have access to product, all that stuff,
maybe they can have access to digital fashion,
and that’s cool too.
Yeah, digital fashion has like a big future.
I see a future where it’s going
to be pretty much like Ready Player One,
like, the Spielberg movie where we will have our own-
Without the dystopia, hopefully.
Hmm? Without the dystopic part,
hopefully.
[all laugh]
No, but I mean, we will have our online version
with our own online characters.
We’ll be having those like metaverse where we will
meet virtually and our representation of fashion
is really important into those worlds.
So, we will definitely look to be different
and have our own fashion virtual closet.
It’s very interesting.
We were talking about this exact topic on
our Vogue China podcast.
We were talking to an AI entrepreneur,
Olivia Gambelin, who has doppel,
and it’s kind of exactly what Bryan was talking about
with the digital twins or the virtual version of yourself,
or an AI version of yourself
that other people can interact with,
and kind of behaves on your behalf.
I think more than anything it’s just going
to make creativity and fashion,
and honestly, fashion education so much more accessible.
You know, to have all these curated identities online
that you can access at any time.
I think it’d be amazing for universities.
Obviously, there are ethical considerations,
and kind of scary considerations of, you know,
your AI version of yourself knowing so much more
because they’re interacting with more people as you.
But I think what Bryan was saying about the liberation
of the visual restrictions or the real-world restrictions
of the individual is super interesting.
And I think we have to,
it’s such a immediate reality now
that there’s no point in kind of shying away from it.
It’s better to embrace it,
and regulators obviously have to work on it
to make sure there’s ethical guidelines and frameworks.
Talking about, oh, you want to add something?
No. Oh, talking about ethics,
I also wanted to know what you think about what AI can do
in terms of sustainability.
Because there has been a lot of talk
when NFT was coming out.
And actually, that was not as sustainable
as one could thought.
But what do you think?
Like, is this kind of like a maybe a solution
to the waste in the fashion industry problem or?
I mean, for me, like with CGI and everything,
I can do what I do in New York City where I live.
I don’t need to fly out anywhere
’cause I just make it on a computer.
And I think that applies to AI as well.
I think the old method of flying everyone to like Naples
or something for like three weeks to do one editorial
just sounds crazy now, and really irresponsible.
And I think that AI can really,
yeah, it absolutely can help that
because it’s all make-belief.
Yeah, definitely.
Reducing the carbon footprint with like reducing the flying
for your whole team as you said, like,
AI will be able to create this entire editorial,
virtually, don’t need to fly out with people.
And yeah, that will help a lot.
Do you want to add? I think from
a fashion production standpoint, it’ll also help.
I mean, this is more to do with clothes,
and, you know, printing physical magazines
or printing physical product in that,
AI will just have a greater access to more data,
and be able to live provide a lot more options
and solutions for running a waste-free set
or generating a waste-free product,
or you know, sourcing materials
to be able to upcycle for certain things.
I think it’s, aside from what the guys just mentioned,
it’s also about the access to information
that would previously have been so manually onerous.
What do you think, Margaret,
is the role of a print magazine today?
Like, what is the added value?
And would you envision it as a role in the future?
I mean, I think to zoom out a little bit
from a Vogue standpoint,
Vogue is really more of a brand and platform,
and a connector, and a curator than thinking about Vogue
as restricted within the print magazine.
I think, at least, at Vogue China,
the way that we perceive print is more
as this luxury collectible,
it’s a reference point; it’s evergreen.
And so, it’s not really about the news, it’s not about,
you know, things that will be outdated in two weeks.
It’s more, you know, this beautiful as a minimum 200-page,
you know, coffee table volume that our audience hold onto,
and our community look back to as a reference always.
And then, more of the day-to-day
time-sensitive stuff is online.
But I think it’s more about looking at Vogue as this,
you know, incubator for things like this,
you know, the future of AI and virtual creation,
connecting, you know, a cultural curator,
and a cultural connector.
Enabling facilitating co-creation between creators
from different parts of the world,
from different disciplines.
And kind of looking at culture from a fashion perspective
rather than just talking about things.
So, that kind of overall ecosystem we find super effective,
and there’s always a home with the Vogue audience for print.
It’s kind of like we were saying before,
what’s mass versus what is luxury and special to people.
What do you think, Bryan?
Like, is it still important for you to?
And what do you like especially in shooting for print?
I actually don’t put any value into print
because what I actually put value in
is like posting it on Instagram.
But for me, like, I actually think print magazines
have to rise up to the challenge of proving their value.
So, something like Vogue China is incredibly valuable
because it’s pushing boundaries
and it’s showing possibilities.
What Margaret does is show possibilities.
So, I’m on Reddit all the time,
video game forums, music forums,
people are truly excited by Vogue China
because it does things that a lot of other Vogues do not.
They can’t believe that a vogue is doing stories like that.
That’s true value in this industry.
Like, the Vogue logo to me
as a fashion photographer means nothing.
It’s what is the covers?
What is the images that you’re willing to pursue?
That is the value of print to me.
So, Vogue is curation.
And it needs to curate what people are truly interested in,
and that’s why there’s, you know,
there’s some movement of like going back
to like very classical imagery, but we’ve already seen that.
Like, Irving Penn did all that stuff
and he still did it better than a lot of us now.
So, I wanna see something new.
And I think that’s the most important thing.
Vogue, if it can do something new is valuable.
Yeah, I love print, I love magazine.
I’m always being a big fan of like,
those beautiful big objects where you can see and touch,
and even smell the paper.
I think this will always stay,
there’s a lot of like new underground fashion magazine
that do amazing editorial things that you can see
in the digital world.
But the digital and Instagram
and all those social media also like very,
very important nowadays.
So, you really have to be on both level.
I mean, I think that you said, Bryan, something that
also touches another aspect of AI algorithm that,
which is like, I put volume posting on Instagram.
And I was wondering,
ooh, [chuckles] how does the,
like, the fact that we don’t have, so, we are all,
we’re still tied a lot in our mind I think,
when producing an editorial to the print format,
the idea that you have to have a sequence,
that you have to tell a story,
that the story is gonna unfold through the pages.
But the reality of it is that those images
will be seen mainly online as a single images,
scattered in a feed that is gonna be filled
with all these other stuff.
So, my question is how do you navigate this new territory,
and how do you still?
Like, how do you make your image
something that people will stop,
and want to look at in like this overwhelming stimulation?
That’s really like the key to all of it
because when I do an editorial in fashion,
I have to put out eight to 12 images,
I post three of them, Max.
If it’s a really good editorial, I’ll post three pictures.
The whole system is broken.
It’s something that exists from the old world
that we try to carry into the new one.
But why do we have to do 12 pictures?
Because of demands of advertisers, et cetera, et cetera.
It’s just frustrating because most people look at my work
and they remember one picture from every story I do.
And so, like,
I think that making something impactful
is the most valuable thing you can do.
So, when you see a picture of like Nicole Kidman
in a forest just like natural life running around,
it means nothing.
People have seen that picture 100 times.
Just ’cause it’s Nicole Kidman doesn’t mean anything.
But you put Nicole Kidman on a spaceship,
and suddenly, people go, Huh! What the fuck?
And what the fuck means a lot in fashion
because we’ve seen it all.
Everyone has access to the history of magazines.
I became a fashion photographer
by looking at thefashionspot.com.
I saw who was cool,
I liked Mario Sorrenti ’cause his lighting was cool.
I saw Nick Knight, blew my mind. Blew my mind.
We have to communicate with a wider world now.
We have to communicate with people who are into gaming.
We have to communicate with people who literally listen
to the most niche musicians on earth.
Like, something like Vogue has the power to do that.
And to really bring these people in to this orbit
that we call fashion.
‘Cause, fashion is for people that can think creatively.
I think about like people like Eugene Solomon
who is a true freak of nature.
Like, his hair is insane.
He’s a freak, you know?
And it’s like this is who we should be embracing, right?
Yeah, I agree.
I mean, it’s really hard to like you be different,
and see something new that like this visual stimulation
through Instagram, going through all this,
like there’s so many, so many.
So, you have to stand out, try to push the imaginary,
not making something that you already seen,
and always try to be like the most creative you can.
And AI can really bring you there with.
What do you think, Margaret?
How do you make your readers say what the fuck?
[all laugh]
I feel like we do that every day.
I think it’s more, well, to that specific question,
it’s like how do you make it a dialogue
and not a one-way communication, right?
I think gone are the days that anybody, not just Vogue,
but anybody can just stand on a mountain
and yell at people about what they think is the right thing.
Although, I know many people try to do that,
but I think now in this day and age,
it’s really about posing a question.
It’s like everything that you put out there,
especially online needs to be like,
Well, what do you think? Right?
For our audience.
And that’s how we approach our Vogue community, generally.
And I think to your broader question of, okay,
how do we perceive, you know, the social ecosystem?
What will be an AI ecosystem versus what’s in print?
It’s really about considering
whether you’re an artist or a curator,
or an editor, or a corporation,
it’s who are you talking to and what’s the context.
I think Bryan’s right in that,
there are some fairly outdated past frameworks
of we have to shoot the six images or the 12 images,
and then put them all online.
That doesn’t make any sense, right?
Because if you were considering any other type of output,
you would be considering the audience,
who you’re speaking to, how you want them to feel,
and the greater context that they’re observing that in.
Because someone’s gonna feel differently about a visual
output that they’re perceiving from their phone
via a social media platform as opposed to on a billboard;
as opposed to in a print format;
as opposed to in an art gallery.
It’s just a fact of like how humans perceive color
and texture, and scale, et cetera.
So, I mean, for us, with Vogue you will often find
there’s a lot of stuff that appears in print
because it makes sense for print,
but it doesn’t make sense for online.
Whereas our online approach is more kind of work-by-work
as opposed to the whole cohesive story necessarily.
So, I think context is such an important factor there.
I mean, I think that you said something
that it’s incredibly important about the context part.
Because as a visual editor,
you really like, it’s been a big challenge to think
how to translate a different content and make it make sense.
But sometime you find yourself in a way of saying,
We actually shouldn’t translate.
Like, these things works on print,
and we should do something that use the language of online
or the language of, you know, visual design
or the language of AI in like a proficient way.
So, I think that the question I wanted to ask you
is though that,
when I see online AI images,
I actually see a lot of homologation in the aesthetic.
I am very optimistic on the fact that
it’s gonna create a lot of creativity,
but to be honest, what I saw in the beginning
is a lot of reiteration of the same.
What do you think about this
and about also, the obsolescence of that aesthetic?
Because you know, every time a new version
of Midjourney comes out, the old one immediately becomes
very, very visibly old. Yeah.
Well, it’s like I said about photographers
training themselves through references.
If the best you can do on Midjourney
is to create a one-on-one replication of an image
that already appears in something like Vogue Italia,
what are you bringing to the table as a photographer?
Like, I think that’s very…
I think it just shows what you’re capable
of at the end of the day.
If you can create something new on AI,
then, I personally respect you more as a creator,
at the end of the day.
Yeah, I agree. I mean Midjourney definitely
has this like look and feel that you kind of like recognize.
So, we try to play with other tools out there
to really like being able to have a different aesthetic.
And now, we can like create imagery
that do not look like Midjourney at all,
and have like his own signature and grain.
I think it’s also not just about creating imagery that
is not what has already been done in the past,
it’s also about creating imagery or visual approaches
that we would never have imagined before.
I remember having a really interesting conversation with
Percy Lau, who’s an amazing Chinese accessories designer.
And actually, after having used Midjourney,
an early beta version of Midjourney for two hours,
she closed her brand because it forced her to reassess,
okay, what is my artistic purpose on this earth?
And if Midjourney can make better sunglasses designs
than I can in a year, in two hours, then, you know,
I need to reassess what I’m contributing here, right?
And her view is always kind of like how arrogant
are human beings to think that AI will just emulate
the human experience, which I find really interesting.
Which is true because we kind of try and squish AI
into this human framework or the human experience box,
whereas if you kind of allow it to run,
then, it can provide us with so much more
that is beyond our imagination.
I mean, I’m sure that also what you are doing
in all your different fields is something
that I feel very strongly,
which is also taking part in an educational process
because I think that visual literacy
and media literacy is something that
it’s incredibly important also in, you know,
shaping the new creatives of tomorrow.
And when I was doing some interviews
on the use of AI in fashion,
the thing that really came out all of the time is that
actually fashion brands are really interesting in that,
but they can’t find people that are proficient,
and have a knowledge of the history of fashion,
and of like how fashion works basically in a visual terms.
Because you have a lot of aesthetic
when you delve into forums and discords about like AI,
it’s usually this kind of like sci-fi futuristic aesthetic.
So, what do you think about what should be done
for educating, you know, the new creatives?
That’s a really good question.
Okay, so, I absolutely agree
there’s a lot of science fiction stuff.
It’s like it kind of is the undercurrent
to a lot of AI stuff.
I think that it’s really interesting
to actually go the other way
and try and make it more grounded
because I have actually had that issue too
where I will prompt something like,
picture of Jennifer Connelly shop by Steven Meisel.
And the person doesn’t really look like Jennifer Connelly,
and it doesn’t really look like Steven Meisel.
So, it’s such a funny thing to think about
because it’s so easy for me,
because my work is so grounded in fantasy
and science fiction to get what I want out of it.
But I think again, it’s just communication, right?
I think it’s like,
the key to any image maker is being able to communicate,
even if it’s just you doing the work
or if you’re part of a team,
you have to be able to explain yourself.
And so, AI is a test of explaining yourself.
Yeah, that’s true. I mean, we train AI.
So, we actually give external data set to create,
and give more,
and so, then, AI becomes more flexible.
And you can really push it
and become really more responsive to your prompt.
So, we can prompt very good details into the closing
and everything comes out.
And this comes from training and like,
bringing on like large data sets into what exists already.
I think it just comes down to two things.
One, what are you trying to say?
And two, how do you want people to feel?
Because I think regardless of, you know,
whether or not we’re talking about AI, right?
If we think about photographers, you know,
often, people see, as Bryan mentioned,
people referencing older photography
or if you came up as an assistant of another photographer,
you know, you’re naturally going to have studied
their way of lighting or studied their way of composing,
and you absorb a lot of that,
and you bring that into your own work.
For music for example, it’s the same thing if you’ve worked
with certain producers
or you’ve come up under somebody as a mentor,
then, you’re going to carry elements of that in your work.
And so, I think it’s more about with AI
where the possibilities are even more endless,
but also somehow more overwhelming
because there is almost too much choice in a way.
And like the guy said,
You do have to know how to interact with it.
It’s more about taking a step back and zooming out,
and assessing, okay, what is my purpose
as far as what I’m trying to communicate with my work;
and then, how do I leverage AI for that
as opposed to being led by the trending aesthetic
of the latest Midjourney update.
I mean, I completely agree.
Like, I think, that more and more,
like if you work in the creative industry,
your job will either resemble
or will add also a curatorial part for sure.
And even like if we will have this new professional figure,
I don’t know how we’ll call it,
the prompter or whatever’s gonna happen.
Maybe, you know, every industry will have some AI prompter
in their office to kind of like,
you know, navigate the AI panorama.
But like, knowing your purpose
and knowing what you want to say,
it’s like one of the most important thing
that you can do right now
in this overwhelming constant flow of image.
So, I actually wanted to ask you today, right now,
what excites you still about fashion,
and fashion photography or fashion imagery,
let’s say, let’s not say fashion photography,
but fashion imagery?
What excites me is the next generation
because they’re coming in,
I mean, I just did a talk on gaming.
Gaming will change this industry.
Gaming is worth more than fashion,
it’s just we should be embracing the idea
of them sponsoring covers instead of fashion brands
because the money that they have is limitless.
So, an example I did is I tried to do a K-pop cover,
well, I’m still trying to do it.
And we try to get a fashion brand that I love
and they just didn’t have enough money,
but the video game company came in
who did a collaboration with this K-pop group,
and they doubled the budget in one day.
So, for me, that is actually the most exciting thing
is the future of fashion.
And it’s just about who is willing to embrace this.
If you look down on video games,
and you’re kind of looking down on the next generation
who don’t view video games any differently than movies,
and music as a source of inspiration.
And quite frankly, I think, a lot of the engagement
that the fashion industry has had with gaming,
like, creating skins and things like that
has been so inefficient
because they’re not working
with real gamers to develop these things.
So, like, if Final Fantasy
comes to a stylist, and says,
Hey, design a skin for my video game. Design an outfit.
You better be as good as a character designer
because they are fucking amazing.
They take the fashion industry and like morph it.
Like, you have to challenge them and rise up to their level.
They don’t need to rise down to fashion’s level,
you rise up to theirs.
That’s what I think is exciting.
Yeah, I agree. I mean,
video gaming and where it goes, it’s pretty amazing.
Me, what’s excite me is like this new tool that you can
boost fashion creativity a lot.
And yeah, it’s.
What excites you in fashion now, Margaret?
I would echo the sentiment around
next generation thinking just because
it’s such an accelerated speed of evolution now, right?
We are not like, Oh, this decade and this decade.
It’s like this six months and this two months,
just things are changing so quickly that,
younger and younger, I wouldn’t even say generations,
it’s like quarter generations
or even tribe-based interest groups.
They have such a fresh way
of looking at different social issues, looking at visuals,
they have very different visual languages.
It’s not necessarily age delineated,
it’s approach delineated.
So, that’s really exciting, you know, for me,
to be able to, through our Vogue platform,
discover these new talents that we never would’ve been able
to discover in the past,
and leverage our platform to give them the voice
that they would never have had before.
I think what also excites me is extremes.
You know, I think sometimes different creative industries
can become super insular and super siloed,
and it’s only the people on the inside
who have the privilege of having a voice within the space.
But because it’s such a democratization of creativity,
not just via social media and not just via AI.
I think more broadly people are seeking out those voices
from the outside to bring either a credibility
or bring a fresh point of view,
or challenge their point of view
within what was previously their silo.
I think that’s going to encourage a lot more
cross-disciplinary interaction is that cross industry,
like, and not just, you know, video gaming, and fashion,
and the way that the guys were just talking about,
but also, what about, you know, science?
And what about different formats of fine art?
And what about FinTech, right?
It’ll encourage more cross-industry discourse,
which I think, is really important for innovation.
Yeah, the schools as well.
A lot of schools are like creating new course,
and try to like understand how to teach that
to their new students.
So, they all figuring out exactly what’s going on right now,
and the schools that are the starts
of like the fashion future designers.
So, it’s really interesting to see.
Yeah, I mean, I think that on a photography perspective,
to be honest, I think that schools
could really up their game
because there are not a lot of schools that are really like,
exploring like the possibilities.
One school that I’ve seen really doing this is a Cal,
for example, they have an entire program
on automated photography,
and how photography is really being changed.
The idea that we have on photography
has really been changed.
So, I mean, I think that what you’re,
and I really hope that what we are doing today also
is a little bit like adding to that discourse
to the importance of educating on the new possibilities.
But which are not of course neutral.
I mean, there are problems there.
Like, one thing that I also wanted to ask you
is how do you think that this shift towards
virtual realities will change and impact the need
that the next generation is asking for representation?
I think that’s true.
Representation might be existing in the virtual world.
I’m working on a book right now
with my friend Dylan Travels, who’s amazing hairstylist.
And the reason we connected was our love of video games
and character design.
We have asked so many supermodels,
celebrities to be a part of this book.
And we asked them to design what they wanna look like,
what kind of character.
Every single person within five minutes can think
exactly who they want to be, everyone.
And it’s such a wide range.
There’s Grimes and then there’s Eve’s tumor.
Everyone can imagine themselves as a version
that they want to be.
And sometimes it’s not physically possible
to exist like that in the real world.
So, perhaps real representation
might have to exist virtually in my opinion.
Yeah, we will all have like a digital twins,
like, all younger generation are getting into that already
with the video gaming like Roblox and all.
One thing that is still important
is to always keep this human.
We have to be careful to not being too disconnected
between the virtual and the real.
I think that this virtual world
or this kind of second life approach,
not only will it provide more access to people who might not
have been able to access creative industries before,
but I think, more specifically,
it’s more of a socioeconomic thing as well, right?
I think it’s not just about, you know,
people from different racial backgrounds,
cultural backgrounds, ages, et cetera,
that will be able to participate,
but it’s also people from different walks of life,
who maybe never thought that they could be a part
of a certain creative culture industries that,
you know, if we’re being honest,
can often be super elitist, right?
It is not super welcoming
or even kind of financially possible to be a part of.
So, I think that open network of creatives
who will be able to talk to each other on a daily basis
on a different plane is going to mean
that we get a way more, not accurate,
but more diverse reflection
of what’s happening in the world.
Yeah, a lot more diverse.
We see that with the AI fashion Week actually,
we have like people that are coming from,
their lawyers, or architects,
or totally outside of the fashion world,
and they’re playing with those tools with the Midjourney,
and create like amazing fashion collection.
So, it’s really great to see that, how they, yeah.
And I feel like…
Sometimes, I do feel like I would rather hear
what a 13-year-old teenager in China thinks
than like a 50-year-old creative director
who’s had 20 years of experience in publishing.
Because what they have is an outside perspective.
And it’s really exciting to see how they view themselves,
and how they view the fashion industry.
Because like I said,
I think the most amazing things in fashion
are the people that really think outside the box.
And fashion can be so insular where it’s like,
who is this cover for?
What is this collection for?
And I had a talk with my friends earlier about like,
you know, Milan is like this whatever square feet city,
and people spend their entire life savings to get a beg,
just to be seen around Milan, basically.
And so, like,
I just really believe that fashion is so amazing,
like truly just like one of the greatest things
because it embraces fantasy and embraces possibilities.
And so, I truly believe in the optimistic side of it.
And to push it further, we need to start embracing people
that we have not traditionally embraced, truly.
And so, I remember that I did this interview
with a digital artist that said something that was really
like eye-opening for me.
He said, My work is a kind of digital drug.
I explore identities that I couldn’t even imagine
I could have.
And in a way, I think that,
I mean I’m an old millennial now.
And I remember though that, you know,
I don’t know if you experienced internet
when it was anonymous.
Like you, we all had the, you know, alter ego.
It’s something that it’s not, maybe a Gen Zs
is used to be like themself on the internet,
but we were inventing characters.
And I mean, I had a lot of fun like,
pretending to be somebody that was not,
and I pretending to be maybe sometime a boy,
or like, I don’t know, a girl of another age.
And I think that in a way this could really open up like
an exploration of our identity
and you know, even like,
having fun with fashion again in a way.
Because from my point of view, we are moving right now,
probably for macroeconomic reason,
but we’re moving in a moment in which fashion feels
kind of like closing in a more conservative,
very safe space.
Yeah. So, why do you think
that when we are like actually,
experiences these explosion in creativity,
impossibility of creativity?
On the other end, we’re seeing this super conservative shift
from many brands, and many magazine, and many photographers.
Do you really want my honest answer?
Yeah. I mean, you know that you’re filmed.
So. [laughs] So, I will say that
the old guard came up and it’s sometimes not through merit.
There are creative directors in this industry who are known
as legends who were just a photographer’s DJ.
A lot of these men were just in London, Paris,
New York at the right time, and they can’t make PDFs.
They hire people my age to make the PDFs for them.
[Chiara laughs] So, what they want
to understand is what they already know,
and they don’t want to engage with people like me.
They have never wanted to engage
with people in my entire career.
I’ve never relied on them either.
So, the safety is coming from fear.
They don’t want to even look at these possibilities
because they don’t understand it.
They don’t want to take five minutes outta their day
to go on YouTube and look up how to Midjourney, period.
Period.
Yeah, 100% agree.
The fashion industry itself at its core is very old school
and not really like tech savvy.
So, they always takes them a step to like get there.
Something with NFT and Web3,
they’re still like trying to like figure out how they can
use it as a marketing vehicle, and all this.
And AI, now, it’s the big talk.
So, they’re wondering how they’re gonna be able to use it
and boost their creativity.
Hopefully, it’s going to bring on some exciting thing.
I think it’s common of all industries that,
or all social movements or creative movements
that young people are always on the right side of history.
And it’s fairly normal for older generations
to have an insecurity or kind of gravitate back towards
what they know and really dig in their heels.
I strongly believe that anything that’s actually innovative
is always gonna have at least 50% of people who just hate it
or don’t understand it.
And if you have something that everybody likes,
then it means that you are behind, right?
If everyone looks at something
and they’re like, That’s nice.
Then, you’re failing, basically.
You’re not moving forward, you’re stuck in the past.
And so, I think it’s really more about, you know…
I mean, China’s a great example actually
where people think of China as such
a extremely video-centric,
social commerce-centric digital ecosystem, which is true.
But because from a consumer behavior standpoint,
it’s very far ahead of a lot of other
kind of creative ecosystems in the world.
From a consumer standpoint,
it’s kind of gone so far that the pendulum has swam back
to the middle where the consumer or the audiences
are demanding in-person kind of tactile experiences,
but that doesn’t mean that they’re moving backward
to what it was before, right?
They’re moving forward in so far as they want immersion,
and being able to see, and hear,
and touch, and feel as well.
So, I think it’s really about, okay,
how can the legend,
so to speak, as Bryan phrased it,
in the industries, really look around them
and embrace the young innovators
who can, you know, they can upskill with,
but then, can also move things forward
rather than looking at the framework that they built
and being like,
Okay, well, it serves me to maintain the status quo.
Right?
I completely agree.
And I mean, I actually also noticed that during COVID,
a lot of like our experiences moved online,
and we did have now a pushback to kind of like,
in real life experience.
The thing that I don’t agree with is that
these are kind of like conflictual.
I think that they are definite,
they can compliment each other.
And in all of your work, I think you’re showing this
in a very evident and excellent way.
I would like to pass the possibility to the public
to ask questions
because I think this debate was quite interesting.
So, do you have some question would you like to ask?
Yes.
Yes. Okay, one second.
So, I was wondering because I really like it,
and I also maker,
and I can imagine that I would implement AI myself.
But in the past few years
I had the feeling that models became a bit more human.
So, all sizes, all backgrounds.
And with this,
I’m wondering what AI imagery of women will do
to our self image because the gap’s getting bigger.
I love the work
but I cannot recognize myself in it as a woman.
So, if you think that’s a problem,
I think you can all give your take on this question.
It’s actually very important.
I think that- I think the.
Sorry. Bryan, go ahead.
No, no, Margaret.
Please you go ahead No, Margaret, please go.
I was just gonna say that I think the kind of singular
aesthetic at any point in time with AI at the moment
is just because it’s at an early stage,
because the limitations around the technology,
but also because of the group of people who are using it.
Like, there’s quite a specific faction of creatives
who are, you know, having the resources, having the time,
having the point of view to be able to generate something.
And then, the more people that use it
from different parts of the world,
from different walks of life, naturally,
the more that it will kind of reflect
what the world really looks like.
So, I think it’s just a matter of time,
and it will happen way faster than it did
with real human models in the fashion industry,
which is just a constant battle, right?
I think it’s very valuable to have people like you
engaging with AI, truly.
Because that’s how we actually diversify things,
is by having the people
that have those feelings insert themselves into this.
So, fashion has been very brutal in its approach
to what we should look like.
But AI isn’t, AI is all possibilities.
It’s just if you want to engage with it or not.
I mean, I think that there are a lot of biases
in like how the algorithm are trained,
and there are a lot of people
that are actually fighting that for sure.
But in principle, I completely agree with the fact that
it’s great that we are talking about this now,
but it’s an age-old problem with fashion imagery.
Like, the fact that it brought forward unrealistic standards
and like, a very narrow representation,
I don’t think is just an AI problem.
It’s been a problem of fashion for a long time.
And I agree with you,
like, if we engage,
the more people and diverse people engage with it,
the more we will have like a range of representation
and of different kind of bodies, beauty.
I mean, I see a lot also with like digital designer
that creates avatar for free that can be purchased.
Because in the beginning,
the available bodies where very, very narrow,
very video gamey of the old time, you know,
the kind of Lara Craft old style [chuckles] female body.
What do you think, Cyril, though?
I think the bias in the AI models can be changed
with like bringing on more and more dataset, more and more.
So, now, like, we can have pretty much
any nationality, any style.
So, I think it’s getting there, yeah.
Are there any other questions?
Thank you. Thank you.
So, I have a question to Margaret Zhang.
So, as the head of Vogue China, and also a curator,
you have been help building like
a lot of emerging contemporary artists, photographers,
and models to further build their career.
And my question is, as both a photographer and AI art maker,
would you consider to feature the people who use the AI
as a materials to create artwork like,
more in a fine arts way
instead of making the AI visual deliverables,
like as a visual fragments to compose someone else ideas?
So, and.
Yeah, we already do that.
I mean, obviously,
we cover the full spectrum of culture, right?
Anything that is creative culture-focused,
ranging from music to fine art to sustainability,
to fashion, to music, it’s all relevant for Vogue.
Like, Vogue has a perspective on all of those.
And so, we’ve done a lot of features
and a lot of co-creations actually
with fine artists of any medium.
Some of them in physical installation,
some of them in traditional mediums
where they’re interpreting AI prompts,
some of them with more online virtual ecosystem stuff.
Like, we have a Meta-Ocean initiative that is in partnership
with the UN for instance, with the SDGs organization
around ocean conservation.
But it’s visual storytelling
around ocean conservation involves a virtual avatar,
and we’re working on, you know, how can we work
with different virtual artists and AI-centric artists
or people who use AI as artistic tools
to amplify that world or expand that world.
So, I think it’s more for us,
because we look at everything through a vogue lens.
There’s a certain level
of social commentary that’s required.
There’s a certain level of creative quality that’s required.
And so, that doesn’t restrict, you know,
our lens on AI as only using it
for fashion shoot production, right?
It’s definitely also looking at who are the interesting
people who are innovating in AI,
it could even be tech entrepreneurs,
or developers, for example.
So, yeah, totally.
Thank you.
I think that there was another question on the back.
Oh, and also another one.
I think, yeah.
[Attendee] Thank you for each of your perspectives.
I was curious about, as people who work
across global campaigns and local campaigns,
I just wondered what the interplay
between both of those are now.
Are you really conscious about trying to take,
you know, more local perspectives
or working with local localized artists
depending on the campaign?
Or is the nature of of AI and and generative imagery
more global,
and does that have the potential to lean more
on the erasure side or the unification side?
I mean, I don’t really book that many campaigns, so.
[Margaret chuckles]
I always go for the most universal.
I think my work is super fantasy.
And I think everyone can dive into fantasy.
Like, I don’t know what Peruvian culture is
or something like that, you know?
But I can understand things in a very fantastical lens.
So, my work has always, I believe,
been quite universal in that respect, anyways.
I don’t wanna talk to locals, I wanna talk to everyone.
Yeah, as far as localization,
we did some test with H&M Home
where they wanted to have different type of home settings,
and seeing their actual object that we train on,
and we’re able to place in like a Scandinavian style
or more like a Japanese style.
So, with AI, you can really like see those visual
and very, very fast, and cost efficient too, yeah.
I think this idea of global
and local has actually also really evolved
because, you know, if you look at immigration patterns,
you look at different diaspora,
you look at how different cultures are reinterpreted
or evolved in different parts of the world.
I mean, I speak more specifically
from a Chinese perspective, for instance.
The Chinese American experience is so vastly different
to a French Chinese experience,
an Italian Chinese experience.
And then, a Chinese experience within the mainland here,
it’s region to region so different as well, right?
So, it’s more about, you know,
how do we across communities amplify those stories
and use AI as a tool to create,
you know, different combinations,
and permutations of collaborative talent, I think.
Looking at it specifically from an editorial standpoint,
the way that I always look at it
from a Vogue China lens is like,
okay, it’s not actually interesting for me to work with
an established, you know, iconic American photographer
photographing an international supermodel,
wearing a really established European brand,
because anybody can do that.
But can I force or push this creative to shoot a new face
that we discovered out of China?
Or, you know, shift the narrative.
Like, what is the Chinese Congolese experience,
for instance?
Because, you know, one of the girls that we scouted
out of our open casting is Chinese,
but her father is Congolese
and she identifies as both cultures.
How do we amplify that narrative?
How do we get Chinese designer creations
in the hands of someone like Bryan
who is on the other side of the world,
or somebody in West Africa, for example,
who’s experimenting from a gaming standpoint?
It’s more about how do you open up the channels
of communication to have,
not just a more universal conversation,
but more unexpected conversations, right?
Because I think a lot of the discourse
to date has been east to west, right?
It’s like this hemisphere to that hemisphere,
but it’s so much more complex than just local to global
or adapting global to local now.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
I think we have time still for the last question.
[Attendee] Thanks a lot. Hi, guys.
So, actually, my question was already partly anticipated.
I wanted to talk about generations.
So, I’m totally on board with the sentiment
of being excited about the new philosophy,
about being more inclusive,
being more multidisciplinary,
and channeling all the different sources of culture,
and history, and everything in what fashion does.
The problem is that, I guess, is that still like,
90% of decision-making is held by
an entirely different generation.
And I’m not talking about age, not at all.
It’s about the mentality,
which is sometimes correlated related with age.
I guess, what I wanna ask is, very pragmatically,
I guess, all of us faced this conflict of interest.
Very pragmatically,
what is your piece of advice to mitigate it?
How do you handle it?
How do you think we can be more efficient
in helping this mentality shift?
I’m gonna go first?
Yeah, yeah, please.
What I have always found really helpful
is to be able to speak the language
of who you’re trying to influence, right?
I don’t mean like the, you know, the actual,
you know, French, English, whatever.
I mean, understanding the way
that they understand the world.
And how they qualify success, you know,
what are their motivations?
I think if you can take a moment to observe that,
it means that you’re able to translate
what you are trying to do,
and what you are trying to achieve into their language
so that you make it a success metric for them as well.
Because sometimes,
and it’s really frustrating to have to do this,
but you are not going to get anywhere
by just like smashing your head on a brick wall and saying,
You’re wrong, you’re wrong, you’re wrong.
Look at what’s happening around you.
You’re disconnected from reality.
Because then, people just get defensive.
And they kind of go back into their shell
and they dig in their heels and hold onto what they know.
Whereas if you’re able to look at, okay, what drives them,
you know, everybody has some kind of drive,
even if they’re just trying to get
to their Christmas bonus, you know?
It’s like if you’re able to understand on a personal level,
on a professional level what makes them tick,
then, you can better translate for them,
Oh, okay, this is actually gonna help you
meet your bottom line,
or this is actually gonna achieve a better result
of what you think is gonna be a good result.
I’ve always found that to be really helpful.
As somebody who is, you know, relatively young,
and often, you know, 10, 15, 20 years younger
than many of my peers, right?
I think also like, it’s just like that, really,
It’s kind of like, for me, I think,
a huge thing was community building.
It’s meeting friends who just share my viewpoints on things.
And just working together kind of tirelessly sometimes,
pushing against what people tell us is right or wrong.
And eventually, you prove yourself.
You prove that what you do has true value.
And then, we live in a capitalist society and that’s money.
And so, for me, like when I talk about gaming
as being something that we should embrace in fashion,
I mean that in a very bottom line sort of way.
It’s not just an artistic thing that I’ve embraced.
It’s something that fashion needs to embrace
to re-energize the economy of fashion.
And so, that’s what I think unfortunately, money talks.
If you can make someone care about something
from a money perspective,
you can really push yourself creatively
and you can push them creatively.
Thank you so, so much for being here.
And thank you,
Bryan, Cyril, Margaret. Yeah, thank you,
It was really, really interesting.
And thank you, everybody.
All right, thank you. [attendees applaud loudly]
Take care, everyone. See you soon.
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