‘Smart fabrics,’ 3D printing, laser cutting, all manner of new colors and textures; we have seen plenty of technology influence our latex designing. And the rise of AI surely has plenty of folks wondering just what will happen to their businesses, as we have wondered the same thing. But what just happened during Milan Fashion Week takes tech and fashion to a whole other level.
And people have weighed in on the pros and cons of it.
Four Unitree Robotics robots made their runway debut during the closing of Vogue World’s Milan edition at the event that just passed. Held inside Milan’s historic Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, the humanoid Chinese-made ‘models’ came down the runway during Act IV of Vogue magazine’s annual traveling extravaganza. They walked, waved, and danced alongside human models Alex Consani, Ruth Deng, and Yumi Nu, while Gigi D’Agostino’s “L’Amour Toujours” played.
These runway/celebrity showcase/variety hour/sales events from Vogue have happened in the past five years in cities like New York, London, and Paris. This section of the Milan show, titled “The Age of Intelligence,” was, according to Vogue, exploring how technology and A.I. are presently growing.
According to Juan Costa Paz, Vogue World 2026: Milano’s creative director, “The robots came into the conversation to represent this very moment that we’re living through, which is the beginning of robotics. They’re still very clunky—you know, like how the first cellphones were suitcase-sized—but the robots are meant to be an inflection point in human history.”
Vogue set this companion piece on their Instagram page, featuring the AI-generated image of the very real Italian supermodel Vittoria Ceretti. Expounding on the limits of machines, Vogue seems to be letting us all know that, while they will use AI and robots, they are aware of the cautions needed in going forward with tech.
If we see more from Vogue on this front when they bring the event to San Francisco next year, or any other time in the near future, who knows.
