13 January 2023

Fashion.at's Karin Sawetz asked AI for inspiring information for a virtual fashion and costume museum in the metaverse

Review and outlook by Fashion.at's Karin Sawetz

Around 30 years ago, some years before the magazine Fashion.at was first published in 1996 (co-founded 1995), one of my projects was the evaluation of the financing of an Austrian fashion and costume museum. The plan failed because there was no need to establish an additional museum as clothing and accessories, shoes, jewelry are collected in museums countrywide. Fashion and costume artifacts are collected and exhibited almost everywhere from the large museums like the Kunsthistorisches Museum or the MAK - Museum of Applied Arts to the small municipal and village museums. Also the research on textiles and clothing manufacturing like dyeing, sewing, pattern making is part of the work at many museums where specialists preserve the knowledge of old production technologies and the historical context such as by whom, when and where the objects were worn. Fashion and costumes are part of exhibitions about different topics and in rare cases the main players of an exhibition.

After the founding of Fashion.at, I gave the project a second try. This time, the museum should have been established in virtual space. The plan for the 'Virtual Fashion and Costume Museum' also failed. This time with the question of which institutions and why they should contribute their knowledge to the database. The idea was that visitors of the virtual museum should receive additionally to the historical context information (who, when, where) answers concerning questions such as about the pattern of a dirndl from for example the Lustenau region in Vorarlberg or a reform dress by Emilie Flöge, or the dyeing and finishing techniques of traditionally waxed dirndl aprons. This is a very specialized knowledge that is only relevant for a small group of users such as costume designers for theater, opera and film or fashion designers and couturiers who can use it for research and inspirations. From an economic point of view, the project would be purely a luxurious hobby.

In the future, AI will generate information from participating museum databases easily. But that will be a long time coming considering the currently accessible knowledge generated by AI. The generated information has to be double-checked and can be used as inspiration and not in all cases as a fact.

Today, I asked ChatGPT on chat.openai.com/chat to generate ten questions and answers concerning Austrian fashion and costumes. I wanted to find out which clothing pieces or names of Austrian fashion history and contemporary design are part of the knowledge of such an elaborated language processing AI. Some of the quiz questions/answers didn't match the initial question. The correct questions and answers ranged from traditional headwear over contemporary designers to fashion photographer Trude Fleischmann whose works appeared in magazines like Vogue.

I continued the conversation and asked ChatGPT to set itself into the role of the curator of an exhibition with the title "The creators and wearers of iconic Austrian fashion pieces and costumes" and name important creators of Austrian fashion and costumes. Among the mentioned names are contemporary designers like Lena Hoschek or Arthur Arbesser.

The next question concerned three Austrian men and three Austrian women who became legendary because of the clothing they wore. ChatGPT named six internationally known persons with short explanations why the names were included into the list. The persons who became legendary because of the clothing they wore are according to ChatGPT Empress Elisabeth of Austria, Gustav Klimt, Sigmund Freud, Hedy Lamarr, Romy Schneider, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

ChatGPT is inspiring! Perhaps Fashion.at will curate in future an exhibition in the metaverse with new content previously unknown to the AI.

Images: "Imagine the exhibition spaces of a virtual Austrian fashion and costume museum in the metaverse", pictures generated by Craiyon craiyon.com.