Social feeds are full of AI-made dresses that look like water or clouds and could never be worn. Vanity Fair Italia argues that the more interesting story is happening quietly behind the scenes, where artificial intelligence is already doing practical, rather unglamorous jobs across the fashion industry. Its round-up of ten examples ranges from spotting fake handbags to repairing a favourite jumper. Here are the ones we found most useful.
Telling a real bag from a fake
Luxury resale platform The RealReal uses two in-house tools to help its authenticators. According to the company, Shield is a machine-learning model that checks more than 50 attributes of each item and flags the styles most likely to be counterfeit, so experienced staff look at them first. Vision takes microscopic photographs of details such as leather grain and stitching and compares them with its database to pick up inconsistencies the naked eye can miss. The final verdict, The RealReal stresses, still rests with human experts who inspect each piece by hand.
It is a reminder that quality lives in the details. When you choose a leather bag, look closely at the grain, the evenness of the stitching and the finish of the hardware.
Smarter wardrobes, shopping and repairs
Several tools are aimed at everyday shoppers. Vanity Fair Italia mentions Acloset, an app that catalogues photos of your own clothes and suggests new outfits, even taking the weather into account, rather like Cher’s computerised wardrobe in Clueless. Ourlette turns a photo of a garment into a sewing pattern based on your measurements, while Snoka lets you upload an outfit picture and search for similar pieces, new or second-hand. Zara and Zalando have introduced assistants that understand plain-language requests, and Victoria Beckham’s website offers virtual try-on built with DressX.
Repairs are getting help too. FixIt Fashion suggests step-by-step fixes from a photo of a damaged item, and the Italian start-up Revivo helps brands assess repair requests and estimate costs, with artisans still doing the actual work.
Making less waste
On the industry side, French company Heuritech analyses millions of social media images and, by its own account, recognises more than 2,000 attributes, from colours and prints to fabrics and silhouettes, to help brands judge which trends are rising and how much to produce. Fashion for Good’s Sorting for Circularity project has tested AI to help sort donated clothing, so more of it can be resold instead of going straight to recycling.
The common thread is simple: buy well and wear things for longer. A pair of classic earrings or a favourite necklace will outlast any passing trend.
Sources: Vanity Fair Italia, “Riconosce le borse false, aiuta a riparare i vestiti, evita gli sprechi: i 10 talenti più sorprendenti dell’intelligenza artificiale nella moda” (22 October 2026); The RealReal, Authentication and Real Style, “The Technology Behind Luxury Authentication”; Business Insider, “How The RealReal Is Using AI to Find Fakes”; Heuritech. Featured image: AI-generated illustration.
