Giriraj Singh, Union Minister of Textiles, has launched the ‘VisioNxt Fashion Forecasting Initiative’ of the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), which includes a bilingual web platform and the India-specific Fashion Trend Book ‘Paridhi 24×25’. The occasion was also attended by Union Minister of State for Textiles and External Affairs, Pabitra Margherita, and Textiles Secretary, Rachna Shah.
In this era of rapid fashion, the VisioNxt initiative would promote healthy global competition while elevating Indian culture and design to new heights on the world arena, he stated. He stated that the fashion sector will profit from VisioNxt’s AI and Emotional Intelligence (EI)-based trend insights. This service will help India become a worldwide fashion leader, he continued.
In 2018, VisioNxt—a Trend Insights and Forecasting Initiative—was conceptualised and launched at NIFT Delhi (Creative Lab) and NIFT Chennai (Insights Lab) with the help of the Ministry of Textiles. The effort, which is now headquartered in Chennai, focuses on providing trend insights and forecasting for the Indian fashion and retail business. It also provides trend-related consulting services, academic courses, and workshops.
NIFT VisioNxt is India’s first effort that uses AI and EI to generate fashion trend insights and forecasts. Its objective is to find, map, and analyse geo-specific patterns that reflect India’s positive plurality, cultural diversity, and socioeconomic subtleties, as well as to gather complete trends and insights.
India’s foray into the forecasting field has several benefits: it decreases reliance on global forecasting agencies, provides unique insights into Indian fashion customers, incorporates India’s strengths in information technology and textiles, and mixes artificial and human intelligence.
This research, available in Hindi and English through the VisioNxt platform, will help weavers, producers, retailers, domestic enterprises, homegrown designers, and fashion brands. The program enables users to design, create, and launch consumer-focused, customised collections for this diverse nation. VisioNxt will unveil its first inclusive fashion trend forecast, ‘Paridhi,’ as well as a web page to communicate India-specific fashion trends.
VisioNxt accomplished this by using a one-of-a-kind prediction algorithm called “DeepVision,” which is meant to decode patterns and analyse Indian fashion trends. This model, developed by VisioNxt’s Insights Lab, uses convolutional neural network architecture to identify product details such as whether an item is a Kurta or Kurti, red or yellow, plain or striped, short or long, among other qualities. These observations are then transformed into full reports complete with design and colour guidelines.
A pioneering AI deep learning model created in-house recognises over 60 Indian and 40 Western wear categories using computation with specified accuracy, enabling machine learning applications—a first in India. The program also included the creation of a comprehensive dataset comprising over 70,000 primary clothes photos, as well as 280,000+ secondary image data, in order to uncover patterns in important apparel attributes such as style, colour, and regional accent.
