0
Fashion’s next luxury advantage may be something AI cannot easily copy: craft
Milan Fashion Week put pattern cutters, textile finishers, knitters and shoemakers—not just designers—at the center of the 'Made in Italy' story.
Vogue World Milano and related fashion-week coverage focused heavily on the people behind Italian manufacturing: pattern-makers, shoemakers, textile finishers, knitters and other specialists whose skills are often passed down over generations.
Why it matters
As design software and generative AI make ideas easier to produce, execution, materials and hard-to-replicate hand skills may become more valuable rather than less.
Some of the featured work takes hundreds of hours by hand, creating a sharp contrast with increasingly automated design and mass production.