The Italian Brand’s New Cargo Campaign Synthesizes AI, Photography, and Imagination for a Visionary Vibe of Cross-Temporal Glam
The possibilities for generative AI to unlock new expression in the fashion space continue to evolve. The latest brand to brilliantly harness the emerging technology is The Attico, who have leveraged machine learning and human intelligence processes to revive iconic faces for a new campaign highlighting their signature Fern cargo pants.
The brand’s creative directors Giorgia Tordini and Gilda Ambrosio tapped photographer and digital-editing mastermind Èamon Peel, who combined these two disciplines to realistically recreate the iconic faces of Italian icons in their heyday. Each of the figures poses in a quintessentially midcentury Milanese interior, topless but wearing the brand’s iconic combo of voluminous cargo pants and pointed-toe pumps, styled by Georgia Pendlebury. The resulting images make for a striking and uncannily cool blurring of boundaries between past and present, drawing on timeless style while reframing it with a distinctly contemporary edge.
We’ve seen a few major campaigns created entirely with AI in the past year or so (those of Etro and Casablanca stick out most prominently), but this one feels more original and impactful due to the way the brand preserved the human element. Rather than leaving the entire campaign production to Midjourney, the team used AI to respond to and illuminate real photography, and vice versa. It’s a concept that couldn’t have been done without AI. Though this may be a virtual reality, it imagines a meeting between two real worlds, and takes on a dramatic quality of hyperreality, a retrofuturist dimension that almost could have been.
In this sense, the campaign becomes a manifesto for the brand’s perspective: a timeless spirit of Italian glamor revitalized for the contemporary woman. Not only has The Attico made a unique use of the technology that will define the next era of fashion, but they have done so in a way that stayed true to their identity and brought out aspects of it that would’t have been possible before.
The campaign has us excited for the future of both The Attico and of AI campaigns in general. We hope other brands follow their lead and see AI not merely as a cost-cutting easy solution, but a challenging tool that, when met with real creativity and thinking, can unlock new human possibilities.
The Attico Creative Directors | Gilda Ambrosio & Giorgia Tordini
Art Direction & Styling | Georgia Pendlebury
Photographer & AI | Èamon Zeel