Mango Takes a Cue from Innovation: Former Executives Launch AI Fashion Design Platform

Fashion and AI add connections. Sarah Iglesias Hiller, Lucas Pastur Romay and Matthias Brenninkmeijer, three former Mango executives, have launched a new Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool to facilitate and accelerate creative processes in fashion design. After several years within the Spanish company, and having experienced the latest launches of campaigns and collections created from this technology, the entrepreneurs have launched Artiso, which seeks to overcome the challenges faced by the sector in this area.

“In our time at Mango, we realized all the use cases and ways of working that AI allowed,“ Iglesias tells Modaes. The three founders, in fact, were part of the Spanish company’s transversal AI department, although with somewhat different roles: while Pastur and Brenninkmeijer (the second of the two members of C&A’s founding family) were part of the data team, Iglesias led the Mango Teen design team, going on to become creative director and expert in design with AI.

I found myself in the middle of a moment in which the teen line - one of the latest formats launched by the Spanish company - had limited resources, but it was still in the midst of a crisis,“ she says.I found myself in the middle of a time when the teen line - one of the latest formats launched by the Spanish company - had limited resources, but was growing at an exponential rate,“ she explains, adding that “if there weren’t enough hands, we had to turn to technology.

Artiso was born at the end of 2024 and expects to close its first round this September

This is how the Spanish company’s latest Mango Teen sports and party collection, created with AI and accompanied by an advertising campaign in which the models were also computer-generated, ended up seeing the light of day. Despite the potential of this technology in the digitalization of many of the creative processes, the result still needs to be “reworked,“ says Iglesias, which led to the idea of Artiso.

The AI platform developed by the three executives unifies and automates all the workflow processes of the design teams, from the creation of content for advertising campaigns to the development of patterns and variations of an existing model. To avoid failures, such as generating a print that is difficult to replicate in real life, Artiso uses what is known as agentic AI, or AI agents, “This type of AI remembers other uses, collections and designs in your company, and generates customized results,“ explains Iglesias.

The three entrepreneurs began working on the development of Artiso in late 2024, which finally picked up speed thanks to their first customer, German footwear giant Deichmann.Together with the company, they developed a first project, which has been followed by collaborations with Tata, the Indian company that operates, among others, part of Inditex’s business in the country, with whom it is also in talks to add to its portfolio. Looking ahead to September, the company is also starting to work on an investment round, which will open up the company’s capital and boost the business.

Artiso, however, which for the moment only has Iglesias, Pastur and Brenninkmeijer on the team, already has more than fifty collaborations on the table, among which are also some suppliers. Sarah Iglesias Hiller acts as the company’s CEO, while Lucas Pastur Romay and Matthias Brenninkmeijer hold the positions of product and technology director, respectively.