Emily Adams Bode and Microsoft AI introduce the ‘Bode Vault:’ the first-ever digital quilt expert
Microsoft develops a custom-built digital library of thousands of hand-sourced materials, streamlining the NYC-based designer’s approach to creative process and production
Highly celebrated New York fashion designer Emily Adams Bode has partnered with Microsoft to develop the world’s first AI-powered digital quilt expert that draws upon an interactive archive of antique patterns as a comprehensive resource for design, production, inventory management, and storytelling. As the platform grows and develops its own internal intelligence, the Bode Vault is set to become an industry-changing tool for pairing the rich tapestry of human history with the best of machine insight.
Emily Adams Bode, the founder of eponymous luxury menswear brand Bode, was the first female designer to show at Men’s New York Fashion Week, the winner of the 2019 CFDA Award for Emerging Designer of the Year, and most recently granted the Inaugural Karl Lagerfeld Award for Innovation . Passionate about traditional garment making, her clothing is a nostalgic nod to American craftsmanship and the pieces she designs are deeply personal, each employing the timeless and historic garment-making technique: quilting. Marrying modern workwear silhouettes with the female-centric traditional techniques of quilting and applique, each piece is laden with its own history. All of the garments in the Bode line have a unique narrative that are based on a specific person or moment in history.
“I am excited to partner with Microsoft to help tell and share the stories of American quilts. This partnership uses technology to help us identify quilts in the field and in our stores. I aim to reinvigorate the rich history behind these textiles for my design team as we continue to grow with the potential of it becoming public facing.” says Emily Adams Bode.
With increasing demand, Bode is faced with the challenge of finding ways of organizing and categorizing an extensive inventory of bespoke raw materials — she looked to Microsoft as a long-time technical innovator within the industry to develop a solution for streamlining growth and efficiency. Initially trained on Bode’s existing quilt collection that was compiled by her team, as well as Bode’s extensive network of quilt experts and vendors to establish a rich historical reference toolset from which the Microsoft AI technologies could evolve. The result is a powerful design-to-production platform that draws from history’s most comprehensive library of textiles that is reshaping the company’s internal process, with the potential to do so for the fashion industry at large. Built with Microsoft Custom Vision AI and an integrated database system called Cosmos DB an extension of Microsoft Azure, the archive is trained on hundreds of images to make up a nuanced library that contains an archive of historic quilts of various patterns. From keeping track of inventory to offering up niche institutional knowledge, the archive is also an educational tool that it serves a host of essential functions for the business.
“The partnership with Bode demonstrates how Microsoft technology is unlocking creative and enterprise innovation for fashion designers and the industry,” says Maruschka Loubser, Director of Brand Partnerships at Microsoft. “Particularly for smaller companies, this allows them to rethink their process and structure with technology as a collaborative tool.”
For more information visit bodenewyork.com and microsoft.com/inculture.
