Jonathan Simkhai, founder and creative director of Simkhai, said the AI storefront is another way to translate the brand’s high-touch, atelier-led approach into e-commerce. “We wanted to see how we could bring the warmth of the one-to-one stylist conversations in our stores to the digital experience for our customers,” Simkhai said.

The goal is to solve a familiar online shopping problem: Customers often know the occasion, mood or styling need they are shopping for before they know what to type into a search bar. For example, instead of searching for “white dress” on Simkhai’s main site, a shopper could ask something more specific, like, “I am getting married and hosting a bridal shower in March in Florida, please show me weather-appropriate dresses I could wear to look and feel like a chic, comfortable bride.”

That kind of prompt changes the experience beyond keyword search and more toward curation.

This is where the designer sees opportunity. “Styling is the most exciting aspect for us right now,” Simkhai said. “When someone lands on our website for the first time, they could feel overwhelmed by the products. So the idea that we can curate the experience for them and help them sift through the collection is really exciting.”

The storefront will also include a fit tool that lets shoppers try pieces on their own likeness and see them in motion, according to Vestre.

“Right now, the stylist [agent] is working with our current, available inventory, so every recommendation it makes is something you can actually buy today,” Vestre said. “As we grow into this partnership, we’re interested in the possibility of bringing runway and fashion show pieces into the experience, giving customers a front-row seat to what’s coming and allowing them to engage with our collections before they even hit the floor.”

The AI storefront is powered by Swap Storefront, a new agentic commerce product from Swap. It runs on a dedicated dot-ai site and is designed to take shoppers from discovery to virtual try-on to checkout in one conversation. Simkhai is one of Swap’s launch partners, alongside about 20 others, including Retrofête, Odd Muse and Studio Nicholson.

Simkhai is entering a crowded field of AI-assisted fashion shopping. Zalando introduced a ChatGPT-powered fashion assistant in 2023, Mango launched Mango Stylist last year, Ralph Lauren added Ask Ralph to its app last September, and Asos rolled out a hybrid virtual try-on tool this February. Simkhai’s version stands apart because it is being built as a separate, brand-owned dot-ai storefront, rather than a feature inside an app, marketplace or main e-commerce site.

Still, Simkhai has prioritized clear branding on the dot-ai site experience. The agent is being shaped to feel like a digital extension of the brand’s own styling approach, rather than a generic shopping assistant.

“Simkhai is about personal connection with our customers,” Simkhai said. “I still go to our stores in L.A., NY, Dallas and the Hamptons regularly, and get onto the shop floor to fit and style customers personally. I learn so much from their feedback and feel so close to them, and understand what they want to wear. The agent will need to reflect that warmth, personal connection and understanding, and feel like a digital extension of our in-store experience.”

That brand control also extends to data. According to Vestre, Simkhai retains ownership of the customer relationship and the underlying customer data generated through the dot-ai storefront, including virtual try-on engagement, saved items, browsing behavior, purchase history and checkout data. Swap, he said, powers the infrastructure and keeps only the operational data needed to run and improve the platform.

Simkhai said the broader priority is to stay close to customers as shopping behavior fragments across search, social media, stores and digital ads. “The most important thing is that, however the customer prefers to shop, we can meet them there,” he said. “That said, of course, for our existing customers, it is important to us that we protect their data and keep the relationship with them as exclusive so that they trust us.”

Vestre said the storefront is meant to “collapse the distance between a customer’s intention and the perfect Simkhai look,” rather than replace the brand’s main e-commerce site.

Because Simkhai.ai is still in development, the brand does not yet have results to share. Once it goes live, Simkhai will be watching whether shoppers spend more time in the experience, come back to it, convert at a higher rate and return less. The bigger test is whether a separate AI storefront can become more than a novelty and instead a place shoppers go when they know the event, the mood or the problem, but not yet the product.