The new Ferrari Luce, the brainchild of iPhone designer Sir Jony Ive, is unlike anything the Italian carmaker has ever created - so is the backlash it is facing. Its launch was such a big deal that Italian President Sergio Mattarella and Pope Leo were invited to view the luxury brand's first electric vehicle (EV). But internet critics, investors and even politicians have hit out at the Luce - which is Italian for light. The firm's shares fell 8% the day after the unveiling, as a host of memes mocked the $640,000 (£475,625) car, which is also its first five-seater. It comes as the global motor industry faces a number of major challenges, including fierce competition from Chinese carmakers.

New Delhi/Kolkata, India – A pair of black Dandy Pik Pik loafers covered in sharp, uneven spikes and shiny studs was part of the evidence before Judge Pratibha M Singh in an intellectual-property lawsuit brought by French luxury shoe brand Christian Louboutin against an Indian shoe manufacturer in a Delhi high court last year. Louboutin's lawyers had already regaled the court with anecdotes about the iconic status of their shoes. The signature stilettos, with their luxuriant red soles, had starred in movies like The Devil Wears Prada and Sex and The City, and were registered as a trademark in India and other countries, they said. Riding on the brand's reputation, the lawyers were now trying to make the point that spiked shoes, too, were unique to Christian Louboutin, and the defendant, Shutiq – The Shoe Boutique, was manufacturing and selling their designs in India illegally. Incriminating evidence presented to Judge Singh included testimony from ChatGPT, saying that Christian Louboutin is known for spiked men's shoes. Then there were photographs of Shutiq's 26 spiked and bedazzled shoes next to Louboutin originals, including Dandy Pik Pik.

Dedrick Boyd is an international e-commerce strategist and the founder of TechSparq. In 2022, brands like Louis Vuitton, Burberry, Gucci and Nike showed that they were determined to be early adopters of the metaverse. Mark Zuckerberg's Meta is already pushing the concept with its Horizon Worlds, and Made.com has focused further on its online presence by allowing customers to visualize furniture in their homes with their smartphone cameras. Overall, we can look to the video game industry, which is light years ahead of other industries when it comes to selling digital upgrades. Using real and in-game currency, players can buy exclusive items to enhance their look, vehicle, housing or any other part of the experience.

Shein's AI engine can quickly pick up a change in demand or interest in some new trend, and its supply chain can react in real-time, giving consumers more value and the brand much cheaper operating costs. China is building on what many are already calling the most advanced digital infrastructure, thanks to mega-platforms like WeChat that combine a multitude of single applications under one roof. If there is one certainty today, it is that the digital sphere will become more critical in our lives, with shares of e-commerce increasing disproportionally and AI becoming an even greater enabler and differentiator. We are living through times of massive disruption, with technology becoming a major force behind it. The last two years marked a significant step-change in artificial intelligence, and for the first time, China is leading global AI research both the quality and quantity of research.

IN FEBRUARY, Jaguar Land Rover--based in Gaydon, Warwickshire, and owned by the Tata Group of Mumbai--announced that the Leaping Cat was to be "reimagined" as an "all-electric luxury brand from 2025." In the months since, JLR has declined to provide details. But if realized in full, such a plan would carry Jaguar over the all-electric threshold years earlier than rivals including BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi. Uniquely, JLR's announcement seems to imply some sort of hard stop on petrol-powered Jaguars (about 426,000 global sales in 2020). Other automakers--Daimler and Toyota among them--want to ease the pain of electrification with a generation of gas-electric hybrids and plug-in hybrid models.

I'm often asked why I think Artificial-Intelligence (AI) tools are key for luxury brands' success in the 21st Century. I think that's because AI is one of the most overused buzzwords today, and many people use the term very loosely. In fact, most people discuss AI without really understanding it or what the benefits are. First off, one must know that AI is just a small part of what I call advanced data querying technologies. These technologies also include machine learning and advanced data analytics.

Oscar Wilde famously said, "One should either be a work of art or wear a work of art." According to Fashion and Imagination: About Clothes and Art, since the 1960s, we have obscured the boundaries between the two. Imagination and fantasy are components of any art form, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that the retail world is moving further away from realism, while it embraces the realm of imagination. And today, modern technology is transforming the luxury world as we know it, bringing consumers closer to brands through the use of retail intelligence and analytics, Artificial Intelligence-powered software, gamification reality, augmented reality, and even virtual influencers (VI). Some fashion aficionados will argue that VI sounds like an unreal and implausible reality.

Digital versions of luxury clothing are appearing in apps and video games as brands test consumer appetite for virtual fashion. Drest, a gaming app unveiled by former Porter editor Lucy Yeomans on Monday, invites users to dress photo-realistic avatars in styling challenges, then buy physical versions of those garments on Farfetch. The 75-person startup recruited 100 brands, including Gucci, Prada, Stella McCartney, Valentino and Burberry. Six Italian luxury brands signed up within half an hour of her pitching them, Yeomans says. A waitlist for early access to Drest opens today; the full launch is slated for 2020. Louis Vuitton is also dipping its toes into digital fashion waters.

From best offer predictions to social listening to smart segmentation to facial recognition, vendors have sprinkled AI across nearly every stage of the customer lifecycle. And in many cases, marketers are working backwards, getting sold on new AI offerings that may carry risks and may not be the best fit or provide the biggest improvement in performance. Gartner analyst Andrew Frank recently wrote, "AI's capacity to transform marketing is obscured by a fog of hype, but the breakthroughs are real. Marketing technology leaders need to engage in AI initiatives or risk being blindsided by disruptive AI-enabled competition." So how does a marketer cut through the fog of hype to get to the good stuff?

How Luxury Brands Are Driving New-Gen Online PersonalizationPexels.com According to research by McKinsey, online luxury sales will triple by 2025. Further, 80% of these sales will be digitally influenced. Luxury purchases are no longer the domain of the over forty crowd either. Indeed, millennials are also ready to pay more for personalized luxury items and services.