Science fiction has a counterintuitive lesson for luxury, branding, and AI. In 1977, the original Star Wars movie was released. Almost immediately, it was everywhere, all the time. Children (and probably quite a lot of adults) went to see it multiple times. And you were regarded as a bit of a loser if you only saw it once.
Movies and television series “inspired” by Star Wars began to be released the following year—Starcrash, Battlestar Galactica, and Star Odyssey, among them.
Nearly every one of these movies had some variation on Darth Vader, hand-to-hand combat with lightsaber lookalikes, and variations on the C-3PO and R2-D2 droids.
Star Wars hadn’t copied another Sci-Fi movie. Its creators looked to history. And its costumes drew from World War I officer uniforms, Samurai armor, motorcycle jackets, and 20th-century aviation uniforms.
Fashion designers are also inspired by historical clothing.
Enter GenAI: Everyone in luxury is prompting AI videos for imaginary products.
“What if your next social media post could look like a movie?” one post on LinkedIn asked. It was accompanied by AI-generated footage: A giraffe walks into a room. It’s suddenly standing before a wooden table. The table turns to gold. (We don’t know why.) A generic red bottle of perfume hovers above the table. We see the perfume reflected in the giraffe’s eyes. The perfume bottle explodes and turns to water. Why?
It all means absolutely nothing.
It’s all special effects.
And special effects alone are empty.
The special effects of Star Wars grabbed consumers’ attention. But people watched it multiple times because of its story. Notably, that story was influenced by the work of mythologist Joseph Campbell, who compared myths and legends that had been passed, over the millennia, from one generation to the next.
AI makes it easy to create spectacle.
And luxury is full of spectacle—catwalks, supermodels, fashion magazines, boutiques, and the lives of designers. But all of this points to something deeper:
The heritage of a brand, the genius of a designer, the inspiration behind each collection, the quality of the clothing, where it’s made, the experience of the shops that sell it. These tell us a story and draw us in—or fail to.
In a world of spectacle, it’s the right story that will separate luxury from the ordinary.
