How Bing AI Image Creator became my ethically-exploited fashion intern
An AI-fueled fashion design romp on the green (alternately titled: I wish I went to Polimoda 😮💨)
This is outside the academic and scholarly ambit of most of my posts- I’m back from the Rome fellowship and processing some of the magnitudes of what I saw and studied at the Biblioteca Casanatense- so this is pure creative, cathartic fluff. My most serious research in its published forms I post to Academia and LinkedIn, so the most serious of colleagues should gaze thereupon- if however you’re like me and a creative at heart, come with me on my short and meh journey of internet shoe design.
The background to this story is that I have a party to go to in March that revolves around the theme of Caddyshack ⛳️ Background background, I’ve never seen Caddyshack, but it’s on my calendar to watch sometime- which hasn’t been yet. The theme of “golf” tho I can acknowledge the aesthetics and have appreciated a strong swim at TopGolf in my day, BUT it occurred to me that I could plan a look not just from my own memory bank of impressions growing up around the Audubon Golf Course, the location that inspires my short horror film “Audubon Dark” that screened a whole lifetime ago in Venice and Monte Carlo. Golf and its privileges have certainly inspired other works of contemporary culture and leagues of runway collections. Here we go on the first integration of AI in a super micro scale design project- my outfit for this fundraiser- and the first faltering steps to real world design (spoiler: I haven’t figured it out yet).
Enter Bing’s AI image creator genie. The possibilities of its creations are only limited by the asker’s knowledge and imagination. Here we gooo,
“Show me a fashion illustration of a blonde girl in a look inspired by the classic film Caddy Shack”
My reasoning this far is to best communicate with the bot, I must sound like the bot. #tao_of_ai
Amazing. I have no idea if the actors bear any resemblance to the movie I have yet to see, but I definitely need more outfit inspo beyond a pink jumpsuit. Onward.
The vibes are getting there. Legs and impossible tromping heels seem like an eternal excellent idea. I shared these two with two friends when I truly could not contain my excitement at having a digital fashion illustrator on demand in my pocket in the year 2024. This post is hoping to share that excitement further than my small but brilliant circles here in the marshes. Then, I remembered for whom the party was thrown and plugged in the appropriate school colors, and voilà- I’ve got my look. It’s a combination of these two masterpieces taken to a new a level of precise lines by the sharp sartorial discrenment of AI.
Before, I would have a vague idea in my head and just go shopping… at length. Now I have a literal infinity of production designs which I could theoretically send off to anywhere- this next phase is all strictly TBD TWTWB; it feels somewhat deliciously exploitative, as if one had a stable of the most talented illustrator interns at Parsons or Polimoda, but I am only making these creative demands of an algorithm of electric impulses (which arguably is the basest condition of all life including us, but this is not PhilosophyStack today).
The shoes were another key of this AI designed golfer’s fever dream, and this is when I sent out a first feeler to see if it was even theoretically possible to produce a sample before March. Disclaimer: I know how mad this is, but when madness prevails it is brilliance. Behold, the dream Golf Heel:
There are small details I wish I could tweak clearly through further communication with the platform, but after a certain level of detail it gets stubborn and obtuse. For example, the green astroturf material would be cooler on the lowest part of the block, and the golf ball texture would look better on top by the toes, something like:
These read to me too as a patriotic Italian tricolore for golfers- surely that market exists many place and Jersey definitely???? More in the high fashion key that have strayed from the sculptural vision of the heel shaped as a golf ball on a red tee- but the grass is definitively greenest here:
When the AI does understand the sculptural heel idea, it tends to make the rest super simple:
I dabbled around the internet and found a company that promises to manufacture your shoe design with 7 presales, but I quickly found out that these were for sneakers only and unique heel molds definitely never (the company is Alive Shoes, if anyone is an aspiring sneaker head designer tho). So here concludes my short and still unfolding story of incorporating AI into the fun side of work life balance- for me, Libra girl in my heart and in my marrow, that’s aesthetics and design; the scene of Cher’s closet in Clueless spoke to me at a young age. It wouldn’t occurred to me to have thought that when I grew up, I could describe any outfit, any design, and conjure up instantly a production-ready design. Here the regret comes in that while I was in my arcane research those many years in Italy, I wasn’t focused on design and factory production logistics ah ah ah. Putting this to the vast and potentatial Substack to see just how an AI design could transition to 3D 💫