How We Use AI
How We Use AI
Eleven years ago, my mother and I started this company with one test for every piece: would Diana wear it? She still runs that test. She still tries on every sample. She still sends things back to the design room with a note that says "the sleeve" and nothing else, and the sleeve gets fixed.
That has not changed, and it is not going to. What has changed is how we show you the clothes, and we want to tell you about it ourselves, in plain language, before you hear it anywhere else.
Our clothes are real. Some of the places you see them are not.
Every piece we sell is cut, sewn, fitted and photographed on a real woman before it appears anywhere. The jacket in the picture is the jacket that arrives at your door. The color, the tweed, the buttons at the cuff, the way the waist sits: none of that is generated, enhanced or corrected by software. If we changed the garment in a picture, you would notice the moment you opened the box, and you would be right to.
What we sometimes imagine is the setting. A terrace in Dallas at eleven in the morning. A colonnade in Palm Beach. The light at a long lunch with two friends who are already laughing when you arrive. We use artificial intelligence to build those scenes, and in some cases the women standing in them, so you can see how a piece lives in the places you actually go, not only in a white studio.
Why we chose this
For most of our history, showing you one jacket in a beautiful setting meant a week on location. Flights, hotels, a crew of twelve, permits, a stylist, hair and makeup, a photographer whose day rate would make you sit down. One week, a handful of images, and the bill landed in the same place every brand's bills land: in the price tag.
We decided we would rather put that money in the jacket.
So the tweed is heavier than it needs to be. The buttons are metal, not painted plastic. Every pant comes in Petite and Classic so you never see a tailor. Exchanges are free, as many times as it takes to get your size right. And when you call us, a person answers the phone, during the hours a person should be answering the phone.
None of that is cheap. It is what we chose to spend on instead of a week in a villa. We think that is the right trade for a woman who has spent a lifetime watching brands spend on the picture and skimp on the garment. The setting is for show. The clothes are for you.
Where the line is
We use AI for
- Settings, backgrounds and light.
- Some of the women who appear in our lifestyle images and ads. When a woman in an image is generated, she is wearing a real Noli garment that was first photographed on a real person.
- Early sketches and color studies in the design room, before a single sample is cut.
- Help behind the scenes: organizing our catalog and drafting first versions of product descriptions that a person then rewrites.
We never use AI to
- Change how a garment looks, fits, drapes or is colored.
- Add or remove details, hardware, texture or stitching.
- Alter a real customer's or a real model's face or body.
- Write a review, a testimonial or a quote. Every word attributed to a customer was written by that customer.
- Replace a fitting. Every piece is fitted on real women, in both lengths, before it goes into production. Diana included.
How you can tell
Images that use a generated setting or a generated woman carry a small note: Imagined setting. You will see it in the corner of ads, in our emails, and in the image gallery on the product page. If an image has no note, it was photographed.
And on every product page, the photographs of the garment on a real model are always there, always first, and always what we ask you to judge the piece by. The imagined scenes are the second opinion. The photographs are the truth.
A promise
We design for women over 50 who know exactly what suits them and have no patience for being fooled. We would like to keep your trust for the next eleven years. So if you ever look at one of our images and wonder what you are seeing, the answer is on this page, and if it isn't, call us. 1-866-545-NOLI. A real person will tell you.
The setting may be imagined. The clothes, the fit and the woman who approved them are real.
Slava Furman and Diana
Miami