India, Aug. 18 -- Luxury fashion has long used hyper-realistic animation, illustration and fantastical storytelling to build worlds around its products. What feels different now is the renewed emphasis on visibly handmade techniques. At a time when AI can generate increasingly sophisticated imagery in seconds, the brands are turning to hand-painted watercolour and gouache, as well as painstaking frame-by-frame animation, to tell their stories. Dior's latest Miss Dior film transforms the fragrance into a vintage anime heroine, while LOEWE and Chanel have similarly used crafted animation to move beyond the traditional campaign. Experts decode what it means to the fashion world.

Last week, Dior Beauty released Miss Dior, A Story of Love and...