Technical innovation is becoming key to the creation process for fashion and we’ve recently heard about two major developments.

ASOS has signed a three-year agreement with Microsoft, “driving forward its commitment to operational excellence, efficiency, and data-driven decision-making”. It’s already taking advantage of AI features integrated into Microsoft solutions. 

But under the new agreement, Victoria Arden, the e-tailer’s director of technology operations, ASOS. “Under this new agreement, we’re helping ASOSers safely experiment with generative AI tools that can remove ‘busy work’ from their day, freeing them up to unlock greater creativity and insights and focus on delighting our customers.”

Meanwhile, consumer trends forecaster WGSN has unveiled a new artificial intelligence-driven platform targeting fashion buyers. Informed by data, WGSN Fashion Buying takes in a wide range of apparel, accessory and footwear categories. 

The aim is to inform buyers and help them understand product direction, trends and how deep the buy needs to be for specific styles. 

Its insight include pre-planning and development as well as in-season hindsight to help “future-proof trend decision intelligence and buying-specific forecasts exactly when needed, organized according to the development cycle and customized to category”. 

It’s claimed to be unique by using both WGSN’s trend expertise plus its proprietary TrendCurve AI predictive analytics rather than using historical information only, mainly from a single data source as other offers of this type do.