Forbes and The Cut have both written in-depth pieces about the creative process. If you have the time, read through the latter article- it's beautifully written! I'll include some choice excerpts below:
Enter IBM Watson, a cognitive system that uses natural language and machine learning to process “unstructured data.” In layman’s terms, unstructured data can be anything from scientific reports to social media posts, and Watson can churn through vast amounts of it to reveal otherwise hidden insights.
“We fed [Watson] hundreds of images of Marchesa dresses, and it came back and gave us guidelines of what direction we should go in, which color stories we should take, what textures people respond to. So it was giving us guidelines, then using our expertise to know how to use what Watson gave us.”
To start, IBM Watson partnered with developer Inno360 to understand Marchesa’s criteria for fabric. Marchesa dreamed up the idea of a dress that communicates through pulsating light, so Watson processed data from millions of scientific reports on the compositions, amperage, weight and qualities of different fabrics — something that, let’s be honest, if designers had to do, would take the wind right out of fashion’s creative sails. The result? Watson found the material that best suited Marchesa’s needs.
To provide suggestions on color, Watson...looked at hundreds of Instagram photos. It scanned posts from Marchesa’s feed to get a sense of the colors that captured the brand’s aesthetic, then helped Marchesa select five colors from their brand palette to be used for the responsive parts of the dress.
“Watson gives you information, but Watson itself isn’t designing the dress. And that’s what I liked,” says Chapman. “It demonstrated to me that this wasn’t removing my design process, it was enhancing my design process. It was cutting out the mistakes perhaps I would have made, and questions that would have taken me longer to answer.”
That assistance opens up new avenues of creativity. She continues, “It’s a way of using [technology] to enhance what we do. It’s being able to dream something. It brings a childlike quality back to it. When you were young and you’d imagine a dress that would do things that were a little otherworldly — suddenly it becomes a possibility.”
...effectively making it a cognitive dress: the ultimate pairing of man and machine, of human ideas and computer insight coming together in a piece of clothing that can respond to the reactions it’s creating. For the first time, a dress can understand its audience.
To finish it off with The Cut's final paragraph:
As Watson analyzed the reaction, the dress glowed with hues of rose, aqua, and lavender, reflecting the emotions of joy, excitement, and curiosity. It was unlike anything else seen at the gala, the grand finale to a parade of the world’s best dressed, and a garment that could only exist thanks to a groundbreaking collaboration. If this is a vision of the future, the future looks bright.
Jess