How does the average fashion fanatic find inspiration? With no access to NYFW (or big city fashion in general), most would cite the internet, namely fashion websites and social media, as their main exposure to up-and-coming fashion trends. Instagram specifically gives a platform for not only big companies like Vogue, but small influencers, to share their latest looks and spread new trends. But where do big companies, say, Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior, discover what trends they need to cater to? Shockingly enough, they use Instagram too.
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Heuritech is an artificial intelligence service that can track and predict fashion trends through analyzing upwards of three million social media posts per day. And high-fashion models aren’t the only ones being analyzed: every public Instagram account, from celebrities to small fashion influencers, is scanned for data. The technology goes beyond typical AI because it can identify patterns, materials, products, and brands simply by scanning an image. Originally, Heuritech’s main goal was to bridge the gap between artificial intelligence and business operations, but it has found its niche in the fashion industry. Every post, which must meet relevance and activity standards, is sorted into one of three categories: edgy accounts, trendy accounts, and mainstream accounts. Edgy accounts, normally associated with professionals in the fashion industry, post often and with very distinctive styles. Trendy accounts are instruments of fashion trends that help spread them across the internet, and mainstream accounts are those that simply propagate current trends, posting much less frequently than “edgy” or “trendy” accounts. Once the posts are grouped, “attributes” like shape, fit, material, shade, and silhouette are analyzed.
With all of this data, Heuritech provides its clients not only with information on trends, but also a deeper understanding of market demand, opportunities for growth, and customer profiles. One of the largest problems currently plaguing the fashion industry—and the world in general—is overstock, and Heuritech’s demand forecasting allows for companies to accurately predict production levels to decrease waste. Heuritech’s predictive technology allow companies to both maximize their profits and minimize their waste, which ultimately helps the fashion industry become more sustainable.
Personally, while I appreciate the technology behind Heuritech and the sustainability benefits it can offer to companies, the application of a computer—something so impersonal and unfeeling—to fashion bothers me. I don’t want trends to be cultivated for me by a machine. I want to be inspired by a random person on the street, a color in a painting, a line from a poem. Because in the end, fashion is art, and it should evolve based on humanity and nature and other art, not based on the predictions of a Instagram feed.
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