NOBODY ASKED FOR ROBOTS ON THE RUNWAY: A look at Vogue World 2026

By Clémence MacKenzie Dehais

So… Vogue World 2026 just happened, and my, do we have thoughts. For those of you who live a blissful life offline, Vogue World is an annual global livestreamed fashion charity event and street spectacular. Since 2022, it’s celebrated fashion, local culture and community causes across the world, from Los Angeles to Paris and London.

For its fifth edition, Vogue World set its sights on Italy’s fashion capital, aka Milano. The theme for this year’s event was Italian craftsmanship and ‘The Human Touch in the Age of Technology’, so of course, one would expect a tasteful homage to the crème de la crème of Italian design, especially with Italian fashion royalty seated in the front row.

While the show’s finale did pay tribute to eight iconic Italian fashion houses — Fendi, Gucci, Prada, Bottega Veneta and Prada, to name a few — through the creation of custom-made ‘memory dresses’, it wasn’t this part of the show that caught attention online, but something wearing no clothes at all… robots.

Videos of four Unitree Robotics humanoid robots walking the runway of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II quickly went viral on social media, and fashion experts had a lot to say, from fashion commentator Hanan Besovic, known for his Instagram account I Deserve Couture, to fashion critic account Diet Prada. “The robots dancing in Vogue World were extremely disappointing. But wait for Miuccia,” said Besovic, pointing to Miuccia Prada’s deadpan expression, which perfectly captured the fashion community’s collective reaction.

Vogue World 2026: Milano’s creative director, Juan Costa Paz, defended the decision to include robots as an “inflection point in human history”. Costa Paz added, “It’s fun, because robots are fun. But it’s also terrifying and is meant to say, AI is not going away, and the robots are not going away.” To be fair, they’re definitely not going away when the event itself is sponsored by the likes of Meta Glasses and OpenAI.

The use of robots in fashion, however, isn’t a new phenomenon. When done right, technology can add meaning to the fashion discourse and serve as a creative partner. Just look at Alexander McQueen’s Spring/Summer 1999 ‘No.13’ ready-to-wear runway show in London, where, for the finale, industrial robots encircled Shalom Harlow on a rotating platform and spray-painted her pure white dress. There’s also a more recent example of this with Coperni, who garnered attention online in 2022 for spray-painting a slip dress directly onto Bella Hadid.

What sets these moments apart from Vogue World’s robot runway takeover is the collaboration between humans and technology to create fashion in the real world, showing us that robots don’t have to replace the creative process, but can instead enhance it.

For a show that purported to celebrate Italian craftsmanship, we would have loved to see this kind of collaboration take centre stage. Picture this: an Italian seamstress in the heart of the Galleria, illuminated by a single spotlight as she works. Beside her, two robots, assisting her in bringing the most stunning gown to life. Now that would have been a true meeting of traditional craftsmanship and technology. Maybe next time, Vogue.