Businesses
Fashionabc and AI.DNA Power Indigenous Fashion Showcase at Best of Fashion Awards During New York Fashion Week
10 Sept 2026
Fashionabc, led by Dinis Guarda, is partnering with the Best of Fashion Awards, FashionForward and MI.Moda Indigena to bring Indigenous Brazilian fashion to an international audience through an AI-powered runway presentation in New York on 11 September 2026.
The initiative will present creations from designers connected to Brazilian cooperative MI.Moda Indigena during the Best of Fashion Awards 2026, taking place in New York during New York Fashion Week.
The showcase combines Indigenous craftsmanship, entrepreneurship and cultural heritage with artificial intelligence-powered digital production. Fashionabc and its AI.DNA technology ecosystem are supporting the visual development of the presentation, including areas such as digital production, casting and creative direction.
Brazilian model, entrepreneur and women’s rights activist Luiza Brunet will also participate in the wider programme as a special guest.
Rather than positioning artificial intelligence as a replacement for designers, the initiative explores how AI can become an infrastructure for extending creative visibility, building international market access and connecting underrepresented creators with global audiences.
AI, Fashion and New Routes to Global Markets
The fashion industry is undergoing a major technological transformation as generative AI becomes increasingly integrated into design, marketing, visual production, e-commerce and brand communication.
For emerging designers and smaller creative businesses, these technologies can potentially reduce the cost and complexity traditionally associated with producing international campaigns and presentations.
The New York showcase applies this model to Indigenous fashion.
MI.Moda Indigena works directly with Indigenous communities in Brazil, supporting designers and makers through education and training in fashion design, pattern cutting, sewing, tailoring and entrepreneurship.
Its approach combines cultural preservation with economic development, helping Indigenous creators strengthen their professional capabilities while retaining a direct connection between the designs, their communities and their cultural origins.
By presenting their work during New York Fashion Week, the initiative creates a new international channel for designers whose access to major global fashion platforms has historically been limited.
Best of Fashion Awards 2026
The Best of Fashion Awards (BOFA) is an international fashion platform and competition created to support emerging designers, students, models and creative professionals.
The 2026 edition takes place in New York on 11 September at 6:00 PM, during the New York Fashion Week period.
Its programme combines runway presentations, industry evaluation, awards, professional photography and video production, networking and an international live broadcast.
The event builds on the work of co-founders Rafael dos Santos and Gislaine Balzano, whose teams have delivered more than 500 events across fashion, culture and awards over the past seven years.
Balzano’s international fashion experience includes bringing more than 60 brands to global runways, coordinating over 200 models and directing more than 700 looks during international fashion weeks. Across its wider activities, the organisation has worked with more than 500 professionals internationally.
“Ancestral techniques and generative technology can go together. Seeing MI.Moda Indígena’s fabrics come to life through fashionabc’s artificial intelligence was one of the most innovative projects I’ve ever worked on,” says fashion director Gislaine Balzano.
Rafael dos Santos adds:
“Fashion Week is a spectacle, but it rarely shows ancestry in dialogue with artificial intelligence. This year, we built a stage where fashion designers from Amazon and judges who work for some of the world’s most renowned brands could meet through technology.”
Competition categories include Best Sustainable Brand, Best Evening Wear, Best Casual Wear, Best Creative Design and People’s Choice.
Participants undergo an application and selection process before presenting their collections, with winners and runners-up receiving formal recognition through trophies or medals.
Fashionabc and AI.DNA Power the Digital Fashion Experience
Fashionabc is a fashion technology platform created to support the digital transformation of the global fashion ecosystem through digital identity, directories, search, marketplaces and emerging technologies including artificial intelligence and distributed ledger technology.
Its work connects fashion with sustainability, provenance, identity, technology and new digital business models.
For the Best of Fashion Awards showcase, Fashionabc is demonstrating how AI can expand the communication and international reach of designers while maintaining the importance of original authorship.
Generative AI now allows brands and creators to develop campaign imagery, digital models, environments and alternative interpretations of collections with significantly fewer production constraints.
At the same time, the increasing ability of AI systems to reproduce visual styles has made questions around attribution, provenance and intellectual property increasingly important.
This becomes particularly significant when technology interacts with Indigenous design, where visual languages can carry cultural, historical and community meaning far beyond their commercial value.
Dinis Guarda, founder and CEO of ztudium and founder of platforms including Fashionabc, Businessabc, Citiesabc and Wisdomia, says:
“The wider fashion industry is moving rapidly towards AI-supported production. Generative systems can create campaign imagery, digital models, virtual environments and multiple visual interpretations of garments at a speed that would have been impossible only a few years ago.”
He adds:
“Yet the technology also makes attribution increasingly important. When AI can generate almost any aesthetic on demand, identifying the original designer, community and cultural source behind a creation becomes more, not less, valuable.”
“We are proud to partner with the BOFA 2026 New York edition and support Indigenous fashion through a model in which AI increases access and visibility while authorship remains firmly connected to the people who created the work.”
Indigenous Creativity as an Economic Opportunity
Beyond the runway itself, the project demonstrates how digital platforms can contribute to new economic opportunities for creative communities.
Indigenous designers frequently face structural barriers to international expansion, including limited access to production infrastructure, global distribution, marketing resources, digital tools and major industry networks.
Technologies such as AI can potentially reduce some of those barriers by allowing creators and organisations to produce scalable digital content, develop virtual showcases and communicate their work internationally without replicating the costs associated with traditional fashion production.
However, expanding visibility also increases the importance of responsible business models.
When Indigenous designs are introduced to global markets, questions around ownership, attribution, licensing, compensation and commercial benefit become essential.
The challenge is therefore not simply to make cultural products more visible, but to ensure the communities and creators behind them remain identifiable participants in the economic value their work generates.
Luiza Brunet Joins the Programme
Brazilian businesswoman, actress, activist, speaker and model Luiza Botelho Brunet is also participating in the New York programme.
Brunet is an official ambassador of the Best of Brazil Global Awards, whose main ceremony is scheduled for 12 September on Liberty Island in New York.
Her involvement adds another prominent Brazilian voice to an initiative designed to increase international attention around emerging and underrepresented creative talent.
Fashion, Technology and Responsible Growth
The wider work of MI.Moda Indigena extends beyond fashion showcases.
Its programmes support professional education, entrepreneurship and skills development within Amazonian communities while contributing to objectives connected with gender equality, economic opportunity, reduced inequality and responsible production.
These activities align with several United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, including Quality Education, Gender Equality, Decent Work and Economic Growth, Reduced Inequalities, and Responsible Consumption and Production.
The New York initiative consequently represents more than an experiment in AI-generated fashion presentation.
It highlights a broader business question facing the creative economy: can emerging technologies scale access to international markets without separating economic value from the people and communities responsible for creating it?
As fashion increasingly moves between physical products, digital identities, virtual environments and AI-generated media, provenance and ownership are likely to become increasingly important components of brand value.
For the Indigenous Brazilian designers participating in the Best of Fashion Awards, the New York presentation offers one possible model: using artificial intelligence not as the owner or originator of culture, but as infrastructure that can help its creators reach a global marketplace.
The Best of Fashion Awards 2026 takes place on 11 September 2026 in New York during New York Fashion Week.
