For luxury fashion, one of the biggest challenges brands face is replicating the offline experience online. While the assistance of dedicated staff, an immersive environment, and white-glove services all help to elevate the in-store experience, direct-to-consumer (DTC) sites can often feel automated or impersonal.
Agentic commerce leader Swap aims to change this. Through its agentic storefronts that mirror a brand’s existing own site, fashion players can offer shoppers an interactive format featuring personalized interactions with AI agents who can help them with everything from search and styling to virtual try-on and checkout.
At the recent Vogue Business Global Summit in Chantilly, Swap co-founder and CEO Sam Atkinson and CMO Juan Pellerano-Rendón co-hosted an executive roundtable breakfast with Vogue Business head of custom insights Anusha Couttigane, exploring the possibilities of this new technology.
Attended by senior leaders from brands including Longchamp, Sephora, Esteé Lauder Companies, Ami Paris and Phoebe Philo, the roundtable created an opportunity to discuss the difficulties brands face when designing an elevated e-commerce experience. One of the biggest being the silos that organizations operate within; while integrating AI tools is a priority for most teams, a frictionless integration is rare. Beyond the logistical hurdles of implementing new tools, however, the cultural attitudes of brands can create another barrier to adopting agentic AI — especially for those built around the personality of a designer, or at legacy labels with high levels of brand control to maintain prestige.
Atkinson, who is one of the chief architects of Swap’s suite of technology solutions, explained how there are creative ways to keep brand storytelling at the heart of an agentic experience. “A lot of the solutions that brands are playing with when it comes to LLMs [large language models] and agentic interfaces is that it still feels very prompt-based, very text-based. But we wanted to make it feel like you’re having a conversation with an expert whose sole purpose is to help you find what you want,” he said. “With our agents, you can talk to them, use your voice and have a conversation in the same way you would with someone in a store, and it feels much more interactive.”
The CEO also stressed the importance of maintaining brand identity while creating these solutions. “One of the experiences we’re creating is for Paul Smith: we’ve captured the voice of Paul Smith himself and turned him into an agent. So as a customer, you’ll be able to go online and talk with Paul Smith himself. He’ll be able to tell you about the designs, help you style and tell you about the brand and products in ways only Paul Smith would. This is just one of the ways we’re working on ensuring that brand identity is front and center,” Atkinson added.
