Earlier this year, a rare thing happened when I opened Instagram: I was instantly and utterly mesmerized by the first video on my feed.
It was an animation announcing the GAP x Sandy Liang collaboration created by artist Annie Choi. In the video, a cluster of glowing stars floats through a lo-fi evening scene of Congee Village, a restaurant in New York City and an autobiographical nod to Liang’s upbringing. Then, we see a girl in her bedroom sketching her dream clothes, which magically materialize in her star-knobbed armoire. The overall effect is nostalgic and playful; in a word, the perfect fit for the girly visual language Sandy Liang is known for. I watched it something like 10 times that day.
Across the internet, the animation was a hit, and not just because people were excited about the actual clothes in the collaboration. It seemed that the use of hand-drawn animation itself felt remarkable: “Seeing a brand use animation when so many are using gen AI is such a breath of fresh air,” one Instagram user commented. Another person chimed in to echo that “real art will NEVER be replaced.”
This video and its public reception capture the resurgence of illustrated art in brand social marketing. As more AI-generated content floods our feeds it seems that an equal and opposite reaction to slopification is brewing. Here are examples I’ve saved in my Notes app: Old Navy x Anna Sui’s collaboration animation, Chanel’s animation announcement for Matthieu Blazy’s first Métiers d’art collection, Tekla’s animated short film “A Dog Called Texas,” Alex Mill’s illustrated gift list, Diptyque’s illustrated advent calendar, and Porsche’s end-of-year ad. While the art styles range from cartoon psychedelia to botanical realism, they share the common denominator of whimsicality. Think: a cat playing with a gold-dipped pinecone in a Parisian bookshop, a lost dog making his way home to a London Tekla store and nestling happily atop a stack of striped towels. (Can you tell that animals are popular?)
Choi, the artist behind the Sandy Liang video who has also worked with luxury fashion brands such as Loewe and Hermes, told me that she’s seen an increase in brand inquiries this year. In her view, the luxury sector in particular values the hand-drawn element because it aligns with their focus on craftsmanship. “When you see their content, it’s about how they create their bags,” Choi says. “ They’re showing how the craftsmen do everything by hand, which takes a long time.” By hiring and featuring artists on their social channels, these brands are able to differentiate themselves from the cheap and clumsy connotations of Artificial Intelligence. In the current media landscape — where every brand needs more and more content to farm out to various online channels, and maintaining the “appearance” of luxury can be attained more cheaply than ever — investing in hand-drawn illustration and animation feels like the ultimate flex.
The artists I spoke to talked about ways their profession has evolved alongside major shifts in the media industry. Richard Haines, for example, has been in the game for decades since starting out as an assistant illustrator for Vogue Patterns in New York in the mid-70s. “The real heyday was in the early 20th century, when almost every fashion magazine cover was an illustration,” Haines says. “Now you don’t really see that anymore.” As the decade progressed, Haines saw the gradual decline of illustration jobs as the mass adoption of photography took over.
Then, in the 2010s, the digital media boom brought a fresh wave of editorial illustration opportunities. “My main clients then were magazines, but many have since folded, and there’s just fewer opportunities than there used to be,” the artist Bijou Karman says. I first came to know of Karman's retro-chic illustrations through Refinery29 (RIP indeed). The most dramatic industry trend she’s observed over the course of her 15-year career is the decrease in editorial commissions and the rise in scroll-stopping images for social media.
Fast forward to the 2020s TikTok era: According to artist and illustrator Alexandra Yvette, the platform quickly popularized a style of girly glam y2k artwork known as “Shoe Diva.” Yvette was working as a restaurant when she first started posting outfit videos and her drawings of stylish girls online. While she doesn’t use “Shoe Diva” to describe her art, some TikTok viewers did. The subsequent demand for commissioned portraits and brand projects allowed Yvette to become a full-time artist in 2024. More brands want to work with me now that I prioritize sharing my art online versus before when I was just doing fashion content,” Yvette says. “When you've made something by hand and there's a spirit behind it, people crave that realness.”
We’re now in an era where brands stand to benefit from leaning into analog-coded visuals — if you’re not shooting on film, dabbling in old VHS or Tumblr-inspired aesthetics, or making clever references to pop culture of the past, you’re missing out on the nostalgia factor, certainly. But more recently, hand-drawn visuals have become a clever way to capitalize on that sentiment. GAP, for example, is a multinational corporation, yet their decision to hire a human artist for the Sandy Liang collaboration imbued the brand with the sort of cultural clout typically reserved for an indie business. It feels small and DIY — or as DIY as a corporate brand can get. “Being an artist carries a lot of cachet,” Karman says. “People think it’s a really cool job. Brands want to be associated with artists because it feels interesting, or the handmade quality of the work elevates their brand.”
Beyond the Instagram feed, fashion brands are finding innovative ways to work with artists, and there’s a growing trend of incorporating them in in-person art experiences. For the 2025 holiday season, Haines worked extensively with menswear designer Todd Snyder on illustrations for gift wrapping paper, drawings for store window displays, and a store mural. He was also commissioned for more in-person portrait events than the year before. “There’s been an uptick in demand for live drawing events,” Karman confirms, adding that she has done portrait illustrations at private events for &Other Stories and Christian Dior.
Yvette, who frequently works with fashion and beauty brands on events, has also noticed a shift in the market connected to the newsletter/blog boom. Some people who start these independent media projects want to hire an artist to create branded visuals. (Of course, there’s also an increase in AI-produced newsletters.) In the past year, Yvette has seen “an influx” of requests related to custom logos and graphics.
Of all the artists I spoke to, three out of four said they were “optimistic” about the future of their profession in 2026. Several find assurance in the fact that AI-generated art is limited by its lack of humanity. Regardless of how accurately it can replicate an artistic style, it is incapable of concepting original work. It probably won’t surprise you that I share this view as a writer. Sure, brands might be capitalizing on a cultural fetish for the analog, but the arts could really use a contemporary Medici-esque patron. Artists getting paid is a good thing in my book.
Personally, I think the most interesting thing to watch for this year is the divergence in how brands choose to position themselves in the AI debate. Inevitably, they will be pushed toward one of two extremes as they vie for attention online. Who will shamelessly post the sloppiest slop? Conversely, who will pull off the analog-iest stunt? While its exact form remains to be seen, I'm certain this phenomenon will spawn a new category of consumer aesthetics. For now, it’s safe to say that fashion illustration is in vogue again.
