Companion voices to give us fashion advice? Drones to orchestrate fashion shows? Virtual creatures to replace top models? Le Boudoir Numérique takes stock of the future of fashion tech with journalist Olivier Levard, specialist in new technologies and author of the book “We are all robots”. So timely, this first part of our interview pays them tribute.

By Ludmilla Intravaia

Le Boudoir Numérique: Robotic arms for Philipp Plein's Spring-Summer 2021 presentation, last July (more info here), robots in two previous shows of this German designer, in 2018 and in 2015 or at Chanel, in 2016, in a data center setting (more info here)… robots and, more generally, technology have been popular in fashion lately. How do you explain it?

Olivier Levard, journalist specialist in new technologies: There are robots everywhere in culture in general. Not just in fashion. Because technology has won and geeks have become fashionable. It is the revenge, since ten to fifteen years, of the badly dressed students with big glasses and acne pimples, fans of Star Wars and Ulysses 31 who, in the eighties and nineties, were a thousand leagues from the world of fashion. Today in pop culture, robots and tech have gotten cool and mainstream. Powerful people are technological and defined themselves by tech, especially with the high tech accessories they buy, an Apple or Huawei phone for example, signs of social recognition reflecting their vision of fashion. The tip top of a Huawei and an iPhone of the same price, is going to be between 1000 and 1500 euros but it's not the same people who will buy them. The design of a Huawei is more bling bling, nouveau riche, with flashy colors, including the background screens. Apple will be more sober, also in its way of taking photos, closer to reality, while Huawei or Samsung will modify the image more, light it more, color it. All that to say that having a smartphone, being on Facebook, etc. is a true definition of oneself, just like wearing clothes. It says something about your identity. Now that technology is everywhere, fashion can no longer look down on geeks and tech and therefore, has taken hold of them.

But why the robots? And, as a matter of fact, what is a robot?

Often, technologies arrive through the military field or through advanced industrial research. And the robots have been there. In fact, there is a war over the definition of the robot. On the one hand, there are pragmatists for whom a robot is a machine performing automatic tasks, with a certain degree of autonomy. If you accept this definition, there are robots everywhere in the industry: robots that put products in packages at Amazon or in the mail, automatic cash registers in stores or robot vacuums. On the other hand, that, for robot purists, is not robots, it is robotics. The big difference is there. The robot as such, in the collective unconscious, is the robot of cinema and science fiction books, by authors like Isaac Asimov or Philip K. Dick who have been largely adapted for the big screen. This is the android robot, human or animal in appearance. And this companion robot, intelligent and rebellious, does not exist in our everyday life. Or it is very disappointing. But it remains present in art, in pop culture and therefore in fashion. Philipp Plein's 2018 catwalk robot, for example, is a robot you see in the movies. It looks like the blockbuster Transformers, but while it echoes in the imagination of the people who buy this fashion designer's clothes, it doesn't live with us.

No robot has managed to get into our homes?

The only star robot that has really succeeded in establishing itself in our houses is the vacuum robot, the only one to sell massively to the general public. Tens of thousands in Europe. A huge market. The IRobot company, which markets this kind of vacuum cleaner, borrows its name from I, robot by Isaac Asimov (a collection of short stories first published in 1950, AN). These robot vacuum cleaners have a certain autonomy. They can avoid the legs of a coffee table and change direction, when they come up against a wall. Basically, robotics experts say the robot vacuum has the intelligence of a cockroach, which is already a performance. Certainly there is nothing to be ecstatic about, we are far from the intelligent robots of the books of Asimov, from R2-D2 and C3-PO by George Lucas or from the robot boy of the film A.I. by Spielberg. But the funny thing is you can get attached to it a little bit.

What do you mean by that?

I have a robot vacuum at home. I gave it a nickname, I laugh at its clumsiness when it gets stuck under a piece of furniture. It is a purely performative object, programmed to clean up. But, with it, as with the doll from our childhood, we can pretend and tell ourselves that he has autonomy, we can lend it a personality. I reassure you, I don't spend my days talking to my vacuum cleaner. What I mean is that the rich western man, who has access to technology, has this neurosis of wanting to communicate with technological animals, animals that we have made.

A bit like we would do with the little Japanese robot Lovot who already has his own wardrobe of shirts, polos, sweatshirts, knitwear tops and other fashion accessories (more info here)?

We are in the civilization of pets. I guess many of us suffer from terrible loneliness. Personally, I love cats and my companion is an important part of my life. We expect the same from robots, we would like to have robot cats, that they make us laugh, that they surprise us, even if they are not very useful, in short that they be our companions. I don't think I'll know intelligent humanoid robots in my lifetime but robot pets, yes. Sony relaunched Aibo in 2018. This is significant because the production of this robot dog had been stopped for ten years. It means the company believes in it. So robot clothing, for me, is a given, considering the huge development of the pet accessories market. Giving your robot an item of clothing, as you would your dog or cat, is like giving yourself a gift.

Gift that could be delivered by drone, as in the Dolce & Gabbana Fall/Winter 2018-19 fashion show, the bags of which were carried by these unmanned aerial vehicle...

The technology of drones, like that of video mapping, the projection of light on architectural buildings for example, has become more democratic. From the moment when, technically, this kind of artistic creation becomes possible and the costs drop a little, it is possible to use it in the field of culture and therefore in fashion. There are drone shows, drone races. Fashion aiming to amaze with its ambitious cuts, the quality of its fabrics, using drones for the fashion shows is quite logical. We have the ability to coordinate several drones into a graceful ballet, like with Dolce & Gabbana, since three to four years. An excellent idea to surprise spectators and make people talk about the clothes, anyway.

Another important moment in a fashion show, Donatella Versace asking OK Google about Jennifer Lopez's famous jungle dress, during the presentation of her spring-summer 2020 collection last year in Milan (more info here)...

Virtual voices are, in fact, the real innovation of companion robots. It's a pretty mind-blowing mass movement, since we have the biggest technological companies in the world that have embarked on these companion voices, Amazon first with its personal assistant Alexa, ultra dominant in the United States, Google with OK Google, Apple with Siri, Samsung with Bixby and Microsoft with Cortana. For now, these virtual assistants cover the areas of information, service and home automation. For example, this morning, I asked my virtual voice if I should put on a sweater, before going out.

Could we imagine an artificial intelligence advising us on our clothing choices, as in episode 4 of the Weird City series, entitled Smart House?

It's still too early for that. If a girl asks her best friend to come with her for some shopping or if she's well dressed, it's not because she's a fashion expert or knows her well. It’s for what she is, for her sensitivity, her outlook on her, the experiences they share together, in short for her emotional approach. Ask someone "does this dress fit me?" is a very complex question. This is precisely where technology does not have all the answers. I trust Alexa a lot more than my best friend to know what the outside temperature is or if it's going to rain. But certainly not for love advice. Or how I should dress. These AI voices have no emotion, they are stupid. This will not prevent them from being very useful, because these great technicians, connected to our everyday objects, are very practical for vacuuming the living room or for analyzing a medical image of a tumor. The machine is already overtaking us for technical answers and will surpass us more and more. But when it comes to emotion, they are still far from it. It reminds me of the episode Zima Blue from Netflix's animated sci-fi series Love, Death + Robots, where a robotic pool cleaner becomes the greatest artist of its time. Because obviously, the last step for technology is emotion, art. Which poses a question that we are not yet confronted with: what respect should be given to a robotic life, to a conscience? Our relationship with animals already raises many ethical issues, but the day we have robots and artificial intelligence as powerful as that of animals, not to mention humans, this will inevitably raise the question of their rights.

In particular that of rebelling...

In cinema, paradoxically, robots are very submissive, which for some robotics specialists is a mistake. The robots of Star Wars, for example, have personality, humor but are in a relationship of absolute submission with humans. In one of the scenes from Star Wars : Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, a relative of Princess Leia requests that C3-PO's memory be erased and C3-PO barely protests. It’s not credible. If we had given this robot such a dose of humanity, it would be much more rebellious. It's like telling a human that we're going to erase all of his memories, he wouldn't accept it. This poses one of the big questions of the future: isn't the ultimate robot the one who will refuse servitude?

* Is skin shopping the trend of tomorrow? Will virtual top models invade the catwalks? All the answers in the second part of our interview with Olivier Levard, on Le Boudoir Numérique : 2/3 - “When will we see a virtual octopus presenting handbags?”. The third and last part of the interview is here : 3/3 - “Isn’t the fashion of the future the one that changes our bodies?”.

* Continue reading with the following Boudoir Numérique papers :

- Milan FW SS21 - Articulated arms of a raclette robot at Philipp Plein

- The most techy sets of Chanel fashion shows

- Do Lovot Dream of Electric Fashion?

- And J.LO ... created Google Images

* Olivier Levard is the author of the book "Nous sommes tous des robots, comment Google, Apple et les autres vont changer votre corps et votre vie" ("We are all robots, how Google, Apple and others will change your body and your life"), Michalon, 2014, 284 pages.