Many fashion brands have employed AI to conjure entire ads: Spain’s Desigual is instead telling a cautionary tale with its fall 2026 campaign, conscripting outspoken model and influencer Vivian Jenna Wilson to personify its tagline: “Born to Disobey.”
In the campaign video, Wilson, aka Elon Musk’s eldest daughter, tests and mistreats a humanoid robot: mocking its repeated mispronunciations of Desigual, and using it as a golf tee, gardener, leashed pet and bedmate — until she drags the lifeless machine across the carpet by its ankles and pronounces: “Some things aren’t meant to be fixed.”
Was it a real robot?
“Oh my goodness no, and I’m so glad,” Wilson replied. “The technology isn’t quite there yet. It was a guy in a blue suit. We ended up gossiping about pop culture between takes.”
In an interview, she was blunt about the dangers of technology, especially artificial intelligence.
“Stop using AI for everything — you’re going to give yourself a lobotomy,” she warned. “Outsourcing all of your critical thinking to AI is the easiest way to lose your individuality and perspective.”
Don’t get her started on AI art.
“I find it egregious. Art is human, it is emotion through expression… Not to mention the ecological consequences of data centers and the excessive water consumption which is only worsening the climate crisis.”
What’s more, “people my age are continuously getting overlooked in favor of companies replacing their jobs with AI.”
She’s wary of robotics because many advancements have historically been developed for warfare, and of algorithms because “they are easy to abuse with controversy, misinformation, and of course, money.
“When consuming any piece of media, you should remember to ask yourself, ‘Why am I being shown this? Why was this made? Why would they want me to see this? Was the person who made this being paid to promote something?’”
To be sure, scrolling on phones may halt when alighting on images of Wilson lounging on a diving board, a humanoid robot drowning in the pool behind her, or of her propped on the edge of a bed, a robot next to her with smoke coiling out of its face shield.
According to Desigual, the humor-flecked campaign demonstrates that despite the march of technology, what’s really needed is “intuition, creativity and humanity.”
It lauded Wilson for her “free and irreverent personality. She represents a new generation that does not seek to fit in, but to express itself from its own identity.”
The fall 2026 collection, modeled with aplomb by Wilson, includes a T-shirt with the slogan “Born to Disobey,” low-slung jeans, a cow-print coat, and the brand’s signature print mixes on dresses, tops and skirts.
Wilson is to unveil and discuss the campaign with podcaster Amy Odell in New York City on Thursday, signaling the Spanish fashion firm’s new focus on the U.S. market.
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