Brands we work with

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This article has been updated for the latest in AI Styling for 2020 and was first published in October 2019 A question that we often get asked when attending events or explaining Intelistyle for the first time to people is “Is this the real thing. Is it real AI styling?”. Which used to surprise us but then we realised that there are so many companies out there that claim to do Machine Learning, but what they really do is package up a couple of Amazon, Google or Microsoft cloud ML APIs, combine them with a freely available dataset, and voila, here’s a service that they can sell to customers as AI styling. So we decided to do a write up on our technology to help our customers understand how this really works.

How We Collect Our AI Styling Data Set

We constantly crawl the web, very much like google’s search engine does. Instead of indexing generic information though, we focus on fashion data. We have particular data sources that we prefer, like fashion magazines, social networking websites, retail websites, editorial fashion platforms and blogs. That process allows us to collect thousands of outfits put together by human stylists. We use images and text to get the most complete and accurate information. Now as you can probably imagine most of the web’s images are quite noisy. How do you extract the individual garments that are included in an outfit with varied backgrounds, different poses and models? The approach we took was to create a bounding box model that can create bounding boxes for each garment. Using that approach we were able to create a unique dataset of millions of outfits that we could use for training our AI styling model.

How We Keep Our AI Styling Data Set Up to Date

That dataset is constantly updated and quality controlled by our team. That allows us to keep up with the latest trends across different regions. We have clients in China, Europe and the Middle East and as you can imagine, the trends in each of these regions are very different. What is considered fashionable in one region, isn’t necessarily in another. Our Machine Learning team uses the latest academic research to craft a proprietary, bespoke set of AI models that analyse images and text. Each garment in our database is described using a 128-dimension “signature” or embedding. You can think of this as a very similar process to what Shazaam does for music tracks. Each of these signatures describes the important characteristics of each garment and leaves out the noise. However to create an AI styling intelligence that can perform as well as actual stylists, a good dataset and embeddings was not enough. While talking to our clients we realised that there are fashion rules that can make or break an outfit. For example, an off the shoulder top with puff sleeves should not be styled with a skinny-fit blazer. Our model could not predict these rules as good as humans yet. 

How Our AI Styling Quality Outperforms Human Stylists

The solution to that was to train another model that can detect rich attributes such as it’s fabric, cut, style, colour as well as other unique characteristics and categories for each garment of our dataset.  We also work with stylists with experience in brands such as M&S, Topshop, Prada and Vogue to create a unique set of ‘guidelines’ for our model to give preference to specific attributes when creating an outfit. And of course, because no two regions are the same, we can customise those guidelines to particular trends. For example, in the Middle East shorter hemlines are always paired with a longer overcoat and in Asia slip dresses should be layered over shirts. The result? A proprietary set of AI and data, that outperforms all published academic research to deliver outstanding styling quality, trusted by the world’s top luxury brands such as D&G, MaxMara and Lane Crawford.  We even tested it against real stylists and fashion influencers at London Fashion Week. As Forbes reported, 70% of respondents unwittingly chose the looks created by our model. 

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“Ones to Watch” list showcases 50 UK-based projects praised by experts for delivering new products, services and experiences through creative and tech expertise. This report, described as “who’s who guide of the UK companies at the forefront of Createch” was the highlight of the Createch 2019 conference held at London’s Code Node on 11^th June, as part of London Technology Week. The list was compiled by innovation research specialists Springwise with support from London & Partners and Digital Catapult.

Tim Davie, CEO of BBC Studios and Co-Chair of the CIC, a joint forum of government and industry said: “The intersection of creativity and technology is one of the most exciting growth areas in today’s economy. Createch 2019 will provide a unique guide for anyone trying to navigate through this fast-changing landscape.“

Createch has identified 4 key sectors that revolutionize user experience:

1) Immersive Entertainment

2) Transformative Experiences

3) Seamless Service

4) Personalised Tools

Intelistyle, AI styling and omnichannel personalisation start-up, is one of the 50 companies featured in the “Ones to Watch” list. “Styled by AI” isn’t yet a commonly used term, although that may be about to change, the report concludes. 

Intelistyle features in the “Personalised Tools VR ⁄ 3D ⁄ Robotics” category both for its B2B personalisation services to fashion retailers and for the personalisation offered to the end-user through its chatbot. The artificial intelligence (AI) software basically offers effective styling results across platforms: from in-store to online, even at home – a truly omnichannel experience.

Another reason Intelistyle made the list is the revolutionary technology that outperforms latest academic research to ensure excellent styling quality: Through the use of machine learning, the data from thousands of outfits put together by stylists, influencers, designers and retailers is extracted to decode the ‘essence of style’ and offer styling solutions.

The same exceptional styling quality got Intelistyle featured in Forbes, for outperforming human stylists during London Fashion Week in 2019.

Intelistyle’s “secret power” is providing customised, on-brand, personalised recommendations to fashion retailers, improving their KPIs (revenue, conversion, clicks-through-rate, average order value and more) while delivering a better customer experience.

Intelistyle in Createch: You can read the full report here.

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This article has been updated for the latest developments in fashion technology as of 2022 and was first published in May 2021

The world’s most significant and profitable industries are facing massive changes thanks to advances in technology. More specifically, blockchain, artificial intelligence (AI), new types of financial transactions and a number of other big leaps in tech are responsible for these ongoing changes to how most industries do business.

Focusing on the fashion industry in particular, these are some of the technology we expect to transform businesses on both online retail and in-store operations.

Blockchain Will Fight Counterfeit Products & Streamline The Fashion Supply Chain

The distributed ledger technology called blockchain is mostly known for being the foundational tech behind cryptocurrency. More generally, a blockchain is basically a string of chronologically arranged code. Each new block of code on the chain requires every computer with access to the blockchain to approve the addition of that data via a shared cryptographic solution, which translates to peer-verified security in every data transfer, addition or modification. It all happens nearly instantaneously, without any of the red tape commonly attached to security protocols. And this same technology can be used to protect products and ensure quality in the fashion industry.

Label Tags Will Redefine Origin and Ownership

Each individual fashion item can be tagged with labels attached to blockchains, which allows everyone in the supply chain to verify its origin, ownership and every time it has changed hands. The LuxTag Project took to Medium to detail how some fashion designers are already taking advantage of this potentially revolutionary technology as a product integrity solution. Back in 2017, Londoner Martine Jarlgaard produced the first smart label-tagged garments. Scanning the tags gave users time-stamped info on everything about the garments – from raw material acquisition and factory information down to how the finished products were packaged and delivered. Similarly, fashion retailer Babyghost used near-field communication (NFC) chips to tag its 2017 summer and spring collection. This allowed customers to use the NFC tags to find out everything they wanted and needed to know about every Babyghost product.

Supply Chain Transparency

Apart from ensuring product integrity, this can also push fashion labels to be more honest about where they get their raw materials, how they conduct labor practices and everything else customers in 2020 (and beyond) will be concerned about. Essentially, information sharing and supply chain transparency are about to become realities in the global fashion industry. This technology is a potentially huge boon to managing the fashion supply chain, the fight against counterfeit goods, and corporate social responsibility.

Competitive Payment Options Will Dictate Retail Preferences

In recent years, payment platforms such as Paypal, Amazon Pay, Payoneer, Venmo and Dwolla have played increasingly large roles not just in online retail, but in various other spaces such as vacation rentals, gaming and service industries. The reason is simple: these payment options offer the convenience and security that some more traditional methods lack. By and large, newer, more innovative payment platforms are now making things even easier for both customers and product and service providers.

A payment technology that has already changed the way customers shop is the buy-now-pay-later services that allow customers to buy a product today and pay for it later. Klarna is one of the service providers at the forefront of this technology in the fashion industry.

Another example is the service called Paysafe Pay Later allowing customers to delay payment until after their ordered products have been shipped, all in a way that doesn’t impact the company’s cash flow. A New Zealand-based gaming company details how online casinos now use the Paysafecard, which is similar but slightly faster than using VISA and other debit/credit cards. Independent of bank, card or other personal financial information, Paysafe instead relies on a single, 16-digit pin to credit money to a customer’s account and verify transactions. It’s currently seeing heavy use in gaming and retail – two of the biggest revenue sources on the web. And it’s just one example of a new payment service that could prove to be a deciding factor in how customers choose which fashion retailers to shop from in the future.

Artificial Intelligence Will Change Everything

There are several reasons why Intelistyle cannot help but cover how AI will change the face of retail. For one thing, AI algorithms are responsible for well-informed and relevant product suggestions for online retail customers. For another, AI can be used to predict trends and product demand, allowing retailers to be better at managing inventory and catering to customers’ needs.

Though they may seem simple, even those small perks can help retailers avoid serious problems – such as the massive surplus Under Armour faced in 2018 when it overestimated product demand and wound up $1.3 billion the hole! And even this is only scratching the surface of the benefits A.I. can provide to retailers.

When integrated into a chatbot, AI can help fashion retailers scale their personal styling services and improve their omnichannel customer service experience.

Examples could go on and on, but even the relatively brief write-ups above provide a picture of how a small handful of tech innovations can and will revolutionize the fashion retail business.

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AI Stylist Outperformed Fashion Influencers

In February 2019, after training and testing our AI Stylist for 2 years we decided we were ready for London Fashion Week. We previously spent a lot of time testing with various stylists we worked with, as well as by withholding parts of the dataset from the model and measuring user behaviour in our app. We were itching though to take it to the ultimate fashion event of the industry and see the reactions of random members of the public.

Our goal was not to run a scientific experiment. This happens daily in our lab, where we test with thousands of outfits (see how ai fashion styling works). Our goal was to interact with real people, hear their feedback, see their reactions and most importantly satisfy our curiosity. Would fashion lovers from all over the world be able to tell the difference between an AI and a human stylist?

AI Stylist vs Human Stylists

So we decided to design an experiment. We generated 10 sets of outfits. In each set, we had two outfits of similar style: One generated by our AI stylist and the other created by Instagram fashion influencers.

The question we asked participants, was “Which outfit was created by an influencer?”. Here is an example.

We used SurveyMonkey to run the survey. Our sample consisted of 27 participants, 82% of whom were female. Each correct guess got 1 point. Participants scored on average 46%. For reference, if they were randomly responding to the questions they would have scored 50%. The highest score by a participant was 80% and the lowest 10%.

Often participants asked what were the criteria to make the decision and our answer was “Choose the outfit you like best”. 70% of them prefered the outfits created by our AI Stylist.

How the AI Stylist Works

So how do we do this? We examine thousands of outfits put together by human stylists, influencers, designers and retailers. Through deep learning, we extract the essence of style. We go a lot further than your typical computer vision techniques that focus on pattern recognition. Using machine learning to find visually similar clothes is commonplace these days.

However, style is a lot more nuanced than finding similar patterns or colours. Two seemingly different patterns or fabrics can be combined together to build a stunning finished look. And two pieces of clothing that would normally clash, can be brought together in a beautiful outfit with the use of right accessories. Employing the latest deep learning technology, we have just started decoding the genome of style which enables us to assign a unique signature to every piece of clothing. AI is only at the beginning of its journey but it’s making huge leaps every day.

Why is this important? Well, it is a huge step for diversity in the fashion retail industry – both luxury and fast fashion retailers are putting inclusion to the forefront of their offering. While body positivity is a huge movement, most retailers still build their lookbooks through studio photoshoots with fashion models. This means that looks offered to customers on retail websites cater to one body type, skin tone, hair tone and eye colour. Offering styling advice to each customer is expensive for a retailer. And what about different occasions, weather and style preferences?

AI offers the potential to scale fashion styling advice, creating outfits personal to the needs of each customer, celebrating diversity and individuality. Companies such as Stitchfix have already demonstrated the power of that approach. We want to take this further, allowing customers to digitise their wardrobe, style their own clothes and receive a personal service across their favourite retailers.

Read the full Forbes article on the success of our AI Stylist at London Fashion Week.

Interested in learning more? Get In Touch!

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Innovation is an essential component to success in retail today as AI opens the doors to enhancing and scaling operational capabilities that businesses traditionally had to execute manually. Kostas Koukoravas speaks to Validify‘s CEO, Fergal O’Mullane, about the biggest innovations in fashion retail and how retailers can leverage AI technology to stay ahead of the curve.

Talk to us about your latest venture and how did you come up with the idea.

Validify helps leading retailers access curated and vetted information on the latest emerging retail technology from around the world. I have been working in the AI retail tech space in London for the last 15 years, consumer shopping behaviour has transformed in this time on the back of transformative innovation, in particular, the use of smartphones and social media. The number of tech companies launching new solutions has also increased exponentially and retailers are finding it increasingly difficult to identify the right technology for them. We founded Validify to help retailers to discover groundbreaking innovation and to help streamline the selection and adoption process.

What are the most interesting applications of A.I. in the retail industry?

It’s very early days for AI in retail. Artificial intelligence is an overused term and encompasses a number of areas from machine learning to deep learning all the way through to image recognition and natural learning processing (NPL) that underpins voice technology. At present, the application of AI in the retail industry is limited or in ‘pilot’ phase. Despite current limitations, there are interesting applications of AI in the areas of personalisation, stock inventory, search and customer service (chatbots) to augment retail operations.

AI in Retail: Personalisation

Retailers turning to machine learning and predictive analytics to serve up personalised content and outfit recommendations to their customers. Whilst conceptually not new (Amazon has led the way in this for years), the detailed level of customer and product attribute tags that can now be assessed in real-time significantly improves the personal experience.

AI in Retail: Inventory Management

AI is used in retail to automatically analyse swathes of data to predict demand, forecast inventory and replenish in real-time. Can reduce stocks, excess build-ups and the need for markdowns. It also enables retailers to stock the store with different products depending on demographics.

AI in Retail: Image analysis

Prevalent in the beauty industry, facial recognition technology being used to provide customers with personalised recommendations based on skin types. Image analysis also being used in-store to analyse customer footprint and sentiments in relation to the environment and product.

AI in Retail: Chatbots

Though still in relatively early stages, NLP is being used to enable these chatbots to interpret human language and sentiment in order to respond in ‘human-like’, conversational manner. Similar to the technology being used in Amazon Alexa and Google Home etc.

Can you give us some examples of the most innovative companies in retail? What makes them stand out?

There are some great examples of innovation coming from both mature retailers and the newest online players. H&M is a great example of a company that used to lag behind. However, in recent years has deployed innovative technology across the business including investing in automated warehousing, employing AI-driven inventory management technology to its recent development of voice-activated mirrors in its flagship store in New York. Ikea is another great example of a company embracing innovation as a core pillar of their business. They continue to invest in new technologies such as Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) whilst partnering with Apple and Amazon to further their technology ambitions. They were one of the first to use AR in a practical application enabling customers to visualize the product in their homes without ever going near a store. On the other side of the spectrum, new retail incumbent Stichfix is innovating with fashion design, using AI to create and design garments reactively to consumer opinions/ buying habits. What makes these companies stand out is their understanding that innovation and technology is core to the future of their business, not an afterthought. In particular, these companies are willing to experiment with new technologies ahead of their competitors via trial and error. The acceptance that failure is part of the innovating process and the ability to move on quickly will enable these retailers to potentially stay ahead of the curve.

What are the biggest barriers to adopting AI and innovation for mature companies in retail?

Mature companies are often burdened by legacy technology, processes that prohibit technology adoption and a culture that doesn’t foster innovation. Mature businesses working off legacy technology lack the agility to adapt to the pace of change we are currently seeing in the retail space. This is conflated by the elongated internal processes and decision-making often found in larger, more mature companies. The culture of ‘innovation’ has traditionally been harder to foster in more mature companies often seen as the responsibility of a single person/ team to manage. Without company-wide acceptance that innovation is necessary it acts as a barrier to adoption especially in the current climate where retailer budgets are under increasing pressure. Finally, many companies (not just mature) struggle to know ‘how’ to innovate, what technologies to employ and where to source them.

“…businesses need to take a more agile,  test and learn approach to innovation…don’t be afraid to fail, but fail fast…this is the approach taken by the most successful businesses in the world…”

What are some good ways to overcome them?

To overcome some of these challenges you often have to start to form the top – getting senior management to embrace innovate and make a commitment to invest in doing so. Also, businesses need to take a more agile,  test and learn approach to innovation…don’t be afraid to fail, but fail fast…this is the approach taken by the most successful businesses in the world…including the biggest retailer Amazon.

What do you think the impact of Brexit will be in London as an innovation hub?

Without having a crystal ball, it is difficult to predict the exact impact Brexit will have. There are concerns that incredible talent available in London will move out. The reality is that London already relies on talent and companies outside the UK to help support it as an innovation hub. At Validfy we continue to work every day with technology companies looking to settle in London and build out their teams. There are still huge investments being made into the UK in general and some of the biggest technology companies are still setting up in London.  The UK has over 5million start-ups and that continues to grow – made ever more apparent by the number of co-working spaces popping up in London to support the ecosystem. We do not believe that London will collapse as an innovation hub overnight but it may need to adapt.

What is the one piece of advice that you would give to business leaders looking to incorporate innovation into their strategy?

The first step should be ensuring you truly understand who your customer is, what value you deliver them and what can you do to deliver the best possible customer experience. Innovation is a powerful enabler, but the fundamentals of being a successful retailer haven’t changed, you need to deliver a great product and a great customer experience. Retailers also need to take a more agile approach to innovation, they need encourage a test and learn the methodology to innovation…it’s ok if something doesn’t work, pilot it, if it works roll it out, if it fails throw it out, the important thing is to fail fast!

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