LVMH and Formula 1 on Wednesday announced a decade-long partnership to begin in 2025. As part of the deal, several LVMH brands including Louis Vuitton, Moët Hennessy and TAG Heuer will enjoy sponsorship opportunities across the sport.

LVMH has increasingly aligned its houses with the motorsport. Louis Vuitton has created the trophy case for the Monaco Grand Prix since 2021, Berluti sponsors French driver Pierre Gasly and Dior announced British racing driver and seven-time championship winner Lewis Hamilton as an ambassador in July. Since 2016, luxury watchmaker Tag Heuer has been the official timekeeper of the Red Bull Racing team.

The news comes as fashion increasingly looks to the world of sport for new marketing and sales opportunities. Formula 1 has also enjoyed booming cultural appeal in recent years, leading to interest from sports giants like Puma and streetwear brands.

LVMH and Formula 1 said details of the partnership will be announced early next year.

Stay tuned to BoF for updates on this developing story.

Disclosure: LVMH is part of a group of investors who, together, hold a minority interest in The Business of Fashion. All investors have signed shareholders’ documentation guaranteeing BoF’s complete editorial independence.

Not long ago, designer Norma Kamali saw a photo of actress Jessica Biel wearing one of her dresses, a body-hugging piece made of alternating bands of black stretch jersey and nude mesh. The image inspired Kamali to introduce new versions of the style for her spring collection, but while trying to create them, she felt stuck.

So she turned to artificial intelligence.

Kamali used a tool custom-built for her by the generative-AI creative studio Maison Meta to conjure numerous options to choose from, all of which, in her opinion, looked like they were designed by her. In a sense they were. Maison Meta’s AI was trained exclusively on Kamali’s past work as a way to preserve her design legacy, meaning any “new” ideas it produced reflected back her own creative history.

Kamali’s new AI-assisted dresses and the earlier styles they reference stand near the entry to a new installation by the designer in New York intended to give viewers a glimpse into how she’s using the technology. It’s called Fashion Hallucinations, referring to the term for the warped or inaccurate outputs AI can yield. In the space are eight-foot cutouts of stretched-looking AI-generated models frozen in motion, while a video with a voiceover by Kamali explaining her use of AI plays at intervals.

Nearly two years since ChatGPT introduced the general public to the concept of generative AI, sparking a race in fashion to find uses for the technology, questions about its transformative potential abound. A number of doubters believe its promises have been oversold, pointing to issues like hallucinations.

Kamali, who has now been using AI in her design for several months, is not among them. She appears as convinced of AI’s power as ever.

“For me, it’s really the beginning of a new way to express creativity,” she said.

So far Maison Meta has only trained the AI to produce a few categories of products, including dresses and swimsuits, but it’s changing her creative process in significant ways. For example, instead of trying to sketch out ideas visually, she has to instruct the AI via written prompts. (To make sure it understands them, Maison Meta had to train the AI on an extensive vocabulary of fashion terminology.) Then she essentially acts as a curator in selecting the best results.

In their raw form, those results can look slightly distorted. The video that plays shows the AI’s raw output cleaned up just one degree. The models’ limbs swirl and morph as they move around, momentarily producing oddities like a third leg that just as quickly disappears back into the body. It’s like a first draft that still needs polishing.

The AI Kamali uses is capable of refining the images until their flaws have been stripped away, but she chose to use the unrefined versions in the installation, showing how AI can be used to “evolve and enhance the imperfect images,” according to a panel in the space. Designers who’ve begun experimenting with the technology have pointed to hallucinations as a strength when using it for creative purposes. If it replicates things too perfectly, it’s no longer providing fresh ideas, which is why as the technology improves and hallucinations are reduced, it could diminish AI’s creative power. (What’s called the “temperature” of AI models can be adjusted, however, to increase or decrease the randomness of its output.)

What that might mean in the future is still unclear, as all of this is essentially uncharted territory. To even be able to work this way, Kamali needed an AI model created just for her. A number of start-ups are hurrying to build generative design platforms capable of letting users easily train models on their work and produce designs that are readily manufacturable.

How consumers might respond to a world of AI-assisted design is also to be determined. So far, brands have faced backlash online when customers discovered they were using AI. Critics have lambasted the technology’s developers for training their AI models on copyrighted material without consent and point to its significant environmental impact.

But increasingly, companies are testing out the technology behind the scenes, looking for ways to increase their efficiency or leverage their archives.

Kamali said her reason for doing the installation was to share her experience with other designers and creatives who might be nervous about AI or reluctant to try it out. She wants them to “just relax and have this extraordinary experience.”

“Out of any period of time in my life, this is the most exciting, because we are really just a step right into the future,” she said.

JD Sports’ UK business has been hit by falling sales after disruption in the Red Sea stalled deliveries and the cold, wet spring reduced demand for camping kit and clothing.

The retail group, which owns Millets and Blacks in the UK, said sales at the outdoor kit chain were down 5.3 percent in the six months to 3 August as “key product lines” had been affected by Houthi attacks off Yemen delaying or rerouting shipping and the early date of Easter fell outside the camping season for the first time since 2018.

It said poor weather had compounded the issue, reducing demand for seasonal outdoor living products such as tents and camping equipment.

The chilly and wet weather also hit the group’s main JD sportswear chain in the UK, where sales at established stores were down 4.6 percent in what the group described as a “challenging and often volatile UK market.”

JD said discounting in the market had soared after “unfavourable spring and early summer weather conditions, dampened footfall and full price demand for seasonal [clothing].”

While strong sales of replica football kits during the men’s European Championship helped boost top-line performance, the reliance on these low-margin items hit profits – which were down 14 percent.

Shares in JD Sports, which also owns Sprinter in Europe and Finish Line in the US, where it has bought Hibbett, fell 4.5 percent in early trading on Wednesday. The poor UK performance added to fears about the athleisure market, stoked by Nike reporting a 10 percent dive in global quarterly sales on Tuesday.

Régis Schultz, the chief executive of JD Sports, said he remained confident about the wider sportswear and athleisure market and JD’s ability to outperform because of its multi-brand, multi-country mix.

“[The sportswear market] has years of structural growth ahead of it, with favourable trends like casualisation and active lifestyles continuing,” he said.

Schultz said he was looking forward to working with Nike’s incoming chief executive, adding: “We see Nike coming back. Nike will be fine. Nike is a strong brand.”

The UK sales fall was mainly caused by the weather, Schultz said, and “nothing linked to the consumer [sentiment].” Vintage running gear was expected to be a big trend in the run-up to Christmas, spreading beyond the revival of the Adidas Gazelle and Samba shoes.

JD’s poor UK performance was offset by strong sales growth in Europe and the US, which is JD’s biggest single market responsible for nearly 40 percent of sales. Group sales rose 5.2 percent to £5 billion and pre-tax profit was up 64 percent to £126.3 million for the half.

The group said it still expected to hit profit expectations of between £995 million and £1 billion for the full year but it said foreign exchange shifts had reduced profits by £6 million in the first six months of the year and would bring a £20 million hit in the second half.

By Sarah Butler

Learn more:

JD Sports CEO Blames Nike for Slumping Sales

JD Sports Fashion Plc said sluggish innovation at Nike Inc. contributed to a slump in sales at the UK retail chain as consumers look to refresh their wardrobes.

It’s official: Hedi Slimane is exiting Celine after six years, owner LVMH confirmed in a statement.

During his tenure, the star designer known for his trademark skinny silhouette has transformed Celine, adding menswear for the first time in the brand’s 79-year history, as well as expanding into high perfume and beauty. In womenswear, Slimane reconnected Celine to its historic identity as a purveyor of leather goods that incarnate Parisian bourgeois style, helping to more than double annual revenues to €2.5 billion, according to analyst estimates. (LVMH does not break out figures by brand).

Despite Celine’s success, sources say Slimane had been locked in a thorny contract negotiations with LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault for months before ultimately exiting the label.

Stay tuned to BoF for updates on this developing story.

Disclosure: LVMH is part of a group of investors who, together, hold a minority interest in The Business of Fashion. All investors have signed shareholders’ documentation guaranteeing BoF’s complete editorial independence.