GenAI companion for fashion design teams

Kering organises internal hackathons to explore how emerging technology can strengthen the creative work of its fashion houses: Gucci, Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta, and others. Over three days, cross-functional teams competed to design and prototype a GenAI product that could create real value for the group.

As a Design Facilitator, I ran design workshops under hackathon constraints, and shaped the product concept with a quick prototype demo.

Fashion Designers at Kering spend up to 15 weeks from initial idea to final collection. They start from scratch every season, making decisions in isolation from the data that should be informing them.

Meanwhile, each Maison holds decades of brand heritage, sustainability commitments, real-time sales data, and cultural intelligence that would be used during the creative process.

The team came up with the idea to create a GenAI companion embedded in the design workflow. From any creative tool like Photoshop, a fashion designer can interact with an AI trained on the brand's identity, social media signals, trend data, sales performance, and sustainability guidelines.

Presented to a jury of Kering executives, this GenAI project would potentially cut the design phase by 20%, saving roughly 3 weeks per collection cycle that designers can reinvest in the creative work that actually matters.