Scouting Emerging AI Applications in Fashion Heritage and Archival Practices

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly influences the Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs), offering new ways to support and enhance the sector. In the field of cultural heritage, AI has proven valuable across various disciplines, assisting in restoration, reconstruction, and the enrichment of historical knowledge. This paradigm opens new perspectives for fashion heritage, where AI technologies contribute to the preservation, reinterpretation, and dissemination of digitised archival materials, including garments, textiles, sketches, and photographs. This article investigates how AI is being integrated into fashion heritage practices by combining academic literature with practice-based evidence. Through an integrative review, it identifies three main trajectories of application: Conservation, Reinterpretation, and Exploration. These clusters highlight how AI is reshaping archival workflows, expanding access, and supporting new creative and curatorial approaches. The intersections between the trajectories give rise to the Creative Recovery, Heritage Imaginaries, and Augmented Access, which enable hybrid practices in current AI applications. The study concludes with a critical reflection on the main ethical concerns, including legal issues, economic implications, and concerns about data representation. These reflections are accompanied by a broader reconsideration of how memory is constructed and mediated in the contemporary context, increasingly shaped by human-AI collaboration.