Sign up to receive the Vogue Business newsletter for the latest news and insights on Julie Bornstein and AI startups, plus exclusive membership discounts. To become a Vogue Business Member and receive the Technology Edit newsletter, click here.
Retail executive and entrepreneur Julie Bornstein sees generative artificial intelligence as a way to help people find fashion they want to buy.
Her new startup, Daydream, has raised $50 million in seed funding to build a platform that enables people to search for and discover pieces using generative AI, machine learning and computer vision. People can search using natural language prompts — such as “pastel-coloured dresses for a garden party in Charleston”, or “high-end suits for a business conference in NY” — and Daydream will surface options from participating brands. The round was co-led by Forerunner Ventures and Index Ventures with participation from Google Ventures and True Ventures.
“I have always been particularly obsessed with search and personalisation and could not be more excited for the massive gains in AI over the past year,” Bornstein said in a statement. “We can finally build an intelligent online-shopping platform that will make it easy and fun for consumers to find products they love among the best selection of brands and retailers in the world.”
The company is co-founded by a group of execs whose backgrounds span Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Nordstrom, Farfetch and Pinterest: chief technology officer Matt Fisher, chief product officer Dan Cary, chief commercial officer Lisa Green and chief strategy officer Richard Kim. (Both Green and Kim worked at Bornstein’s previous fashion startup The Yes.)
Daydream aims to specifically solve search for the commerce sector. “The search experience has become increasingly cluttered and ineffective. Search is inherently defined by ‘show me options’ — a broken value proposition when the options are infinite — while service is defined by ‘show me the options that are uniquely best for me’, which is exponentially more valuable in the context of the vast pool of what’s available,” says Kirsten Green, founder and managing partner at investor Forerunner. “With AI advancements, we think it’s abundantly clear that we can do so much better. New service offerings have the potential to work in collaboration with consumers to take broad swathes of legwork off of their plates and reshape what’s possible with context-aware discovery.”
Last year, more than $29 billion was invested in generative AI companies, which is over 260 per cent more than 2022, Pitchbook reports. Generative AI has upended fashion’s innovation pipeline because of its ability, widely speaking, to understand natural human language and to return in-depth, intuitive results.
Large tech companies, including ChatGPT maker OpenAI, Meta, Google, Salesforce, Apple and Amazon have jumped on the fashion opportunity. ChatGPT has targeted brands and retailers in hopes they might embed its capabilities into their own websites to provide customer and clienting services. Meta and Google have begun rolling out features that help people identify and search for fashion. Additionally, Kering and Sephora are testing customer-centric discovery chatbots.
So far, the shopping capabilities are nascent; Meta AI can provide style advice, but it is not yet able to identify specifically branded items or recommended specific items to buy. Google recently added the option for people to generate their own dream garment, then to find a similar item that is available for purchase.
While many companies have recently tried to retrofit fashion searches using ChatGPT-style prompts, Daydream will be a totally new build dedicated specifically to that purpose, with results pulling only from participating brands. So far, at least 2,000 brands are part of Daydream’s catalogue, which includes both multi-brand and mono-brand retailers such as Net-a-Porter, Altuzarra, Jimmy Choo, Dôen, Everlane, Alo Yoga and La DoubleJ. Daydream does not hold inventory, and shoppers are redirected to the brands and retailers to ultimately make purchases.
The purpose — helping people find fashion they want using AI — is reminiscent of The Yes, a fashion discovery platform that Bornstein launched in 2019 (with co-founder and CTO Amit Aggarwal). The Yes enabled shoppers to input preferences and then rate items with Tinder-style responses to curate a personalised feed of pieces tailored to style and size. The concept is akin to Stitch Fix’s ‘Style Shuffle’ feature that launched under Bornstein’s tenure as Stitch Fix’s COO and board member. The Yes raised at least $30 million, including investment from Forerunner Ventures and True Ventures, and recruited former fashion editor Taylor Tomasi Hill. Brands who signed on included Oscar de la Renta, Valentino and Rodarte.
The Yes was acquired by Pinterest just two years later. At the time, Pinterest said it would incorporate The Yes’s fashion-discovery capabilities, which included visual search and data-informed personalisation, but thus far it has been unclear to what extent. As part of the agreement, Bornstein and 48 of The Yes’s employees joined Pinterest (not including Aggarwal), but Bornstein later left the company.
Bornstein says a unique distinguisher of Daydream is that the company is built with the specific purpose of helping people find fashion they want using AI; it’s also unique in that, rather than sourcing from the entirety of the internet, it sources solely from the brands who have partnered with it. Daydream is planning to launch in beta this autumn with womens and menswear, and interested brands and customers can register on its website already.
While Daydream is starting with fashion, Forerunner’s Green sees potential for eventual expansion. “The AI-powered services that stand to break out will lead with experiences that feel white-glove and dynamic, finally delivering on tech’s age-old promise of hyper-personalisation. Daydream is leading this shift in commerce, with the opportunity to reimagine the way we shop and discover things we’ll love.”
Clarification: Daydream shoppers do not make purchases directly on the platform, but rather are referred out to brands and retailers to complete a purchase. 20 June, 2024
Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.