The Style Arcade team touched down for a full schedule during Fashionology’s Innovation Series at COTERIE New York, 9-10 September.
This year COTERIE proved the event has grown beyond its trade show roots to offer brands, buyers, and industry leaders an ecosystem for growth across design, sustainability, technology, and innovation, as well as a centralized hub for fostering connections.
"This September we are taking COTERIE's mission even further. By aligning with strategic partners and New York Fashion Week, we are creating a powerful convergence of creativity and business,” said Purvi Kanji, VP of Events, COTERIE, Fashion by Informa.
For the fashion technology vendors and retailers attending the week’s Innovation Series, the most obvious learning was just how quickly fashion is moving from talking about AI to figuring out how to actually implement it.
The program went beyond AI hype to discuss using existing data better, applying AI to buying and product development, improving customer experience, and embedding technology into workflows.
For Style Arcade’s these are the strategic outcomes for brands and retailers from the event.
Generic AI’s insufficiencies are becoming apparent
Style Arcade’s Innovation Series session, A Complete Framework for Applying AI in Retail, tapped into the broader Fashionology theme of moving from generic technology to fashion-specific intelligence.
“There are so many conversations happening in the industry right now around AI, and addressing some of those questions was the focus of my talk on the Fashionology stage during COTERIE this week,” said Christine.
- Brands and retailers are asking more practical questions about where AI can actually make a difference. There is now a lot more first-hand experience with the risks of using generic LLMs for buying and planning decision-making.
- The conversation has quickly evolved from building with generic tools to how to leverage AI that understands a brand's own products, customers, trading patterns and ways of working.
- Planners and buyers are ready to step up from being known as producers of reports and systems to being the true merchants in their business. They’re ready to move from spending the majority of their days building and mining data and tools to uncovering opportunities and acting on them.
- Brands and retailers are using AI to eliminate repetitive admin like data pulls, reporting, and SKU setup, so teams can spend more time on the calls only humans can make.
AI needs to be connected to brand data, merchandising logic, workflows and business context rather than simply being another chatbot sitting alongside the business.
The Style Arcade team celebrated with some amazing brand leaders at a private dinner at Chez Fifi, and the excitement for innovation in the industry echoed the tone of the entire week. It was the perfect ending to a very special few days.
Download the 2026 Framework for Applying AI in Fashion Retail
