When I was a kid, my favorite place in the world was hunched over a sewing machine. I’d cut up old jeans, hand-stitch fabric scraps into new outfits, and dream of someday seeing my clothes walk a runway. My notebooks were full of fashion drawings. Somewhere in my teens, that dream slipped quietly into the background. Life pulled me in a different direction.
But this year, thanks to AI, I finally staged my first runway show at New York Fashion Week.
Okay, not at the literal Fashion Week runways in Manhattan but on social media where people are scrolling for Fashion Week content. And the wild part? I pulled it together in one Friday night using my own AI-powered fashion brand, yanabanana.
The tech stack behind the catwalk
The show was called The Stockholm Archipelago Collection, inspired by a trip I took to Yasuragi, a Japanese-style spa perched on the water outside Stockholm. Architectural shapes, blue kimonos, and tall pines by the water were my mental mood board as I was designing my collection.
Here’s how I translated inspiration into a digital runway:
- Sketch to photo: I started with a rough sketch of each look. Using Google’s Nano Banana image generation model, I transformed my doodles into photos. Sometimes I generated two photos (a “start” and “end” scene) that would ultimately create a more interesting runway moment.
- Models on the runway: Through prompt engineering, I iterated until all my looks walked the same runway that I had decorated with my photos of the water view from Yasuragi.
- Static to cinematic: I turned the images into short clips with Midjourney’s video model. It worked but I’ll be experimenting with different video models next season. Runway fluidity is tricky!
- Custom soundtrack: Every show needs a vibe, so I used Suno to generate an original Scandinavian inspired track to set the pace.
- Cut & polish: Finally, I stitched it all together in iMovie, as old-school as it gets in the age of AI.
The result? A minute-long AI-powered runway film that could almost pass for an indie cut of a Fashion Week show.
AI is the new sewing machine
What I love about this process is that AI collapsed the barrier between imagination and execution. Ten-year-old me could only dream of sourcing fabrics, hiring models, and booking a venue. Today all I need is a sketch, a stack of AI models to create virtual human models, and a little curiosity.
And yet, the story didn’t stop at the digital runway.
From sketch to closet
At one point, I even thought about building a platform where fashion designers could sketch with AI and then manufacture their garments. That idea simmered until I stumbled on Flair, an early- stage startup already doing exactly that.
I joined one of their sessions with a roomful of fashion designers during San Francisco Design Week this spring. The format was like an AI version of Project Runway. Everyone created some designs, and whichever one got the most votes on their platform over the next week would be brought to life.
Mine won.
I sent in my measurements, and last week a package arrived. Inside was a dress that had started as a doodle on my notebook, passed through Flair’s AI workflow, and emerged as a real garment stitched together in the physical world. Slipping it on for the first time was magic. It was the same rush I felt as a kid cutting up old jeans. Except this time the runway wasn’t just in my imagination. It was hanging in my closet.
The bigger picture
For me, yanabanana isn’t about building a traditional fashion house. It’s about asking what does a fashion brand born in the age of AI even look like? Maybe it doesn’t need to produce clothes at all. Maybe its runways live on Instagram, soundtracked by generative beats, designed with prompts instead of pins. And maybe, sometimes, those designs make the leap from pixels to fabric.
And maybe that’s exactly what makes it fashion-forward.
Yana Welinder is Head of AI at Amplitude. She was CEO and founder of Kraftful (recently acquired by Amplitude).