As a custom menswear boutique, Franco Uomo is always looking for new and innovative ways to showcase our products and build on our brand aesthetic. That's why we decided to leverage the AI Image Engine Midjourney to create a new advertising campaign for our 2023 EuroFit Menswear Sport Coat Collection.

Our Road To AI

Using AI was the natural next step in a creative endeavor that started in the Fall of 2021 with our 3D Rendered Loro Piana Sport Coat Campaign. Instead of producing costly samples, we photographed Loro Piana’s most luxurious fabric swatches and had a 3D artist turn them into sample sport coats that matched our specific #FrancoFit jacket cut.

In 2022 we photographed the new collection of production sport coats in the store and photoshopped creative floral backgrounds that complimented the color selection in the looks.

Building A New AI Workflow

New AI Image Engines like Midjourney gave us a new opportunity to create more dynamic image settings for our campaign. By feeding our sport coats to MidJourney, we were able to create backgrounds that not only complimented the sport coats, but were actually generated with them as inspiration.

The process has never been done before and took a lot of trial and testing before finding what worked. First we provided Midjourney with our designs for the Italian Sport Coat and asked the engine to create images of the sport coats in spring nature settings that represent the end of the very rainy winter that California is coming out of. Midjourney used its powerful algorithms to visualize the sport coats in different settings, and the results were impressive.

The images created by Midjourney showcased the sport coats in stunning natural environments, making them look even more luxurious and desirable. We were thrilled with the results and decided to use the images as the basis for our advertising campaign.

However, we did encounter some problems along the way. While Midjourney was able to create some truly stunning images of our sport coats, it wasn't able to change the lighting and setting without altering the design of the original sport coat itself. This meant that coats in the final images were only similar to the original designs. To fix this issue, we had to manually add in the original pictures of the sport coats to the AI-generated images so that they accurately depicted the products that are available in our store.

Despite these minor limitations, we are excited about the future of AI image engines in the fashion industry. The ability to use AI to create designs and advertising campaigns has the potential to greatly empower designers to create more exotic and high-quality designs. Smaller fashion brands like ours can now produce high-quality advertisement photos without having to produce a full photo shoot.

The Limitations of AI for Fashion

AI image engines do have some limitations when it comes to fashion design and advertising. One of the biggest limitations is the inability to accurately represent the intricate details of fashion clothing products. Clothing can look different in different lighting and take on different shapes depending on how it is worn. While AI image engines can create stunning images of clothing, they cannot always capture the true essence of the product or reflect how it will actually look in a certain setting.

Another limitation of AI image engines is that they may create designs that are impossible or extremely expensive to produce in the real world. While anyone can use Midjourney to design the wedding gown or suit of their dreams, that design may be so exotic that it would cost tens of thousands of dollars to actually create. This means that AI image engines can be used as a starting point for fashion designers, but the final products will still need to be produced by skilled artisans.

For example, here is an example of a bespoke wedding gown the at we designed for one of our clients at La Donna Bridal Atelier on Santana Row:

Working with our client, we translated her “Dream Gown” into a sketch (center) created by our on-site artist. We also gave the same description to MidJourney which produced the sketch rendering on the right. The final gown, and the gown that client was dreaming, is the shown on the left. As you can see, the gown by MidJourney on the right reflects the final gown that we were trying to create, but was far too ostentatious and expensive for the client’s budget.

Prompts that would have limited the aim of the sketched design by MidJourney only resulted in more incoherent outcomes which reveals the prinicpal problem with AI:

The general rule of thumb with AI engines so far is that the more specific you require them to be, the less coherent and creative the results.

We believe that AI image engines will play a major role in the future of fashion design and advertising and that these shortcomings are slowly being resolved. Franco Uomo custom menswear boutique on Santana Row is proud to be at the forefront of this new technology, using it to create stunning advertising campaigns for our products and push the boundaries for visualizing bespoke couture gowns and suit designs that have yet to be made.

While there are limitations to what AI image engines can do, we are excited to see how this technology will continue to evolve and change the fashion industry in the years to come.

Written By Matthew Mountford
(And ChatGPT)