The next creative revolution in fashion isn’t coming from Milan or Paris. It’s coming from inside the machine.

Brands like Balmain and Prada are experimenting with digital muses — AI-assisted characters designed to extend their creative worlds. Balmain’s “Virtual Army” of CGI models and Prada’s digital muse for its Candy fragrance show how technology can embody a brand’s personality, 24 hours a day.

These muses are more than avatars. They are creative systems that learn a brand’s tone, colors, and history until they start creating like the brand itself. A campaign that once needed weeks of production can now be visualized overnight, with storytelling, styling, and imagery that feel made by the house.

For founders and creative leads, this changes the definition of direction. You are no longer designing a product line. You are designing a personality — a voice that lives across campaigns, short-form videos, and AI browsers.

Inside this issue:

✅ Cover Story: Rise of the Brand Muse — How digital muses are reshaping creative direction
✅ Swipe File: Jacquemus’ Beach Club World — The power of building worlds instead of ads
✅ Spotlight: Adobe’s LLM Optimizer — Why your next SEO strategy needs to speak AI
✅ Fun Fact: 

🕒 Read time: 2 minutes — about as long as it takes your brand muse to imagine its next campaign.

The Rise of Brand Muses

Fashion’s next supermodels aren’t human and they never sleep.

Earlier this year, H&M introduced a digital twin of model Mathilda Gvarliani in its campaigns. Her virtual version starred in photo and video shoots generated entirely by AI.
At the same time, a report from spring 2025 revealed that digital clones of real models are becoming standard across fashion advertising.
Something is shifting.
Fashion brands are no longer just hiring faces.
They are creating them.

Why this matters

A brand muse, or digital twin, is an AI-generated character that represents a label’s identity and story.
It is the evolution of influencer marketing into intellectual property ownership.
Instead of renting attention from celebrities or influencers, brands now own a personality that can appear anywhere, anytime.

For decades a fashion house’s image depended on real people.
Now those roles can be algorithmic, trained on mood boards, visual cues, and brand DNA.

What it means for brands

1. Constant creative production
With digital twins like H&M’s, photoshoots and campaigns can be produced in hours. There is no travel, no crew, and no location costs. It compresses what used to take weeks into days.

2. Owning attention
A digital muse is an asset that grows in value over time. Each campaign builds familiarity and attachment. It compounds instead of resetting with every new influencer.

3. Controlled collaborations
A virtual muse never cancels, never ages, and always stays on brand. But audiences expect story and depth. If the muse lacks emotion or narrative, it risks fading into digital noise.

4. Data-driven feedback
Every look, pose, or caption can be tested and refined. Muses make creativity measurable, letting brands adjust aesthetics based on engagement and conversion data.

What it means for consumers

AI muses blur the line between aspiration and automation.
When customers interact with digital muses or virtual stylists, the boundary between marketing and conversation disappears.
Soon shoppers will co-create with these characters: “Show me how this jacket fits my avatar,” “Style this outfit for a weekend in Lisbon.”
This is not fantasy. It is the natural merge of AI video tools, 3D try-ons, and conversational shopping.

What should brands do next

1. Build a character bible
Define your muse’s voice, values, and visual direction. Decide what they stand for and what they never do. Consistency builds trust.

2. Start with short campaigns
Test your muse in limited drops, not full-scale launches. Measure engagement, then expand into videos, lookbooks, or seasonal stories.

3. Connect across channels
Use your muse in newsletters, product pages, and paid ads. The goal is to make the character feel familiar across every touchpoint.

4. Pair human and digital
The best campaigns of 2025 combine both. A real model for authenticity, a digital twin for storytelling and scalability.

5. Keep the story alive
Treat your muse like a living narrative. Give them arcs, milestones, and even imperfections. People follow stories, not pixels.

The takeaway

Fashion has always sold dreams. Now it can literally generate them.
Brand muses are not replacing creativity, they are amplifying it.
The brands that treat these AI characters as storytellers, not stock avatars, will lead the next wave of fashion marketing.

The future of influence is not who wears your clothes.
It is who you create to wear them.

Swipe File (Real tactics used by real brands)

🏖 Jacquemus’ Monte-Carlo Beach Club Play

What they did:
In May 2025, Jacquemus unveiled its new Monte-Carlo store with a campaign built around a fictional “Jacquemus Beach Club.”
The visuals looked like scenes from an endless Riviera summer — sun-bleached parasols, minimalist loungers, and pastel swimwear sets.
The brand released the story across Instagram and short films, teasing followers with lines like “Everything is taken care of.”
It was less an ad, more a lifestyle fantasy you could step into.

Why it works:

• World-building over selling: Instead of a typical product shoot, Jacquemus created a mood — a place that feels aspirational yet within reach.

• Cultural alignment: The campaign’s breezy tone matched Monte-Carlo’s luxury-meets-leisure energy, reinforcing brand DNA.

• Shareability: The visuals felt editorial and cinematic, prompting organic reposts from fashion fans and influencers.

Lesson for founders & brand builders:
You don’t need to advertise products to build worlds.
Create a campaign that people want to visit, not just view.
Whether it’s a fictional event, location, or mood, make your next drop feel like a place your audience belongs to.

The Runway Reel

Netflix helped scale this brand to $100 million

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Spotlight

This week’s pick:
Adobe LLM Optimizer — A Game-Changer for Brand Visibility

Last week, Adobe quietly dropped a tool that might change how brands think about discoverability.
It’s called the LLM Optimizer, and its goal is simple: help businesses understand how their content appears inside AI systems — from chatbots like ChatGPT to AI-browsers that summarize the web for users.

For years, brands obsessed over SEO.
Now, the game is shifting from search engine optimization to language-model optimization.

Why it matters:
AI platforms no longer just link out — they summarize, recommend, and decide what users see.
That means if your website, product descriptions, or brand copy aren’t structured clearly, you might never make it into those summaries.
According to Adobe’s early data, traffic from AI-powered platforms to retail websites jumped more than 1,000% this year.
And the visitors who arrive through AI channels tend to stay longer and convert better.

What this means for brands:

• Your brand narrative is being rewritten by machines trained on your data.

• The clarity, accuracy, and tone of your site now shape how AI describes you to potential customers.

• Optimizing for AI isn’t about tricking algorithms — it’s about being the most understandable version of yourself.

What to do next:

1. Audit your content — See how ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini summarize your brand today.

2. Tighten your metadata — Make sure product names, materials, and categories are clearly labeled.

3. Simplify your structure — Use clean headlines and concise descriptions that AI systems can parse easily.

The takeaway:
We’re entering a world where your brand’s visibility depends less on clicks and more on clarity.
If SEO made you findable, AI optimization will make you summarizable.

A Final Note

Fun Fact

Emily Adams Bode Aujla, founder of Bode (the menswear brand known for historic textiles), was the first female designer ever to show a collection at New York Fashion Week: Men’s (2019)

Let me know what you thought of this edition.Until next time,