Vogue World Runway Features Robots, but Audience Reaction Falls Flat

Vogue World's Milan event closed this week with something nobody expected. In a segment called "The Age of Intelligence," four humanoid robots from Chinese company Unitree Robotics walked the runway at the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, waving and dancing to Gigi D'Agostino's "L'Amour Toujours." One of them twirled a lasso .

They wore no clothes.

What the event was trying to say

The show was marketed as a tribute to Italian craftsmanship and human touch in a technological age. Creative director Juan Costa Paz explained that the robots represented "this moment we're living in, the beginning of robotics," comparing them to early brick phones — clumsy but a turning point .

The audience reaction told a different story. Valentino creative director Alessandro Michele's face went viral almost instantly, and it was not a look of wonder. Miuccia Prada and Donatella Versace applauded politely but seemed puzzled .

Online, the response was blunt. Comments across Instagram and Reddit ran overwhelmingly negative. "Why are there robots here, they aren't even wearing clothes?" one person wrote. "Don't normalize robots please" was another .

The real tension isn't about robots

Two threads are colliding here.

The first is fashion's growing closeness to tech. This year's Vogue World was sponsored by Meta Glasses, with additional support from OpenAI. Next year's edition heads to San Francisco, a timing that doesn't feel like a coincidence .

The second is public fatigue with AI and automation. A tech founder who messaged me on Instagram summed it up: "People are literally losing jobs and livelihoods over these technologies. They should not be incentivizing this more. What is it even showing? Headphones?"

Jason Johnson put it even more directly. Publishing companies are looking for new revenue streams, and tech companies have money. Vogue has cultural reach and access, and that's what the tech world wants .

What I think

Vogue wanted the robots to represent the future. What it actually showed was a disconnect. The fashion world sees tech money and cultural relevance. The audience sees machines being celebrated while real people worry about their jobs.

The decision to put robots on a runway celebrating Italian craftsmanship was always going to be awkward. Italy's luxury industry is built on human hands, human skill, and human stories. A twirling robot set to a Eurodance track doesn't evoke any of that. If anything, it highlights the opposite.

I don't think the problem is that Vogue partnered with tech companies. Fashion has always chased whatever is new and shiny. The problem is the framing. Presenting robots as a natural part of a celebration of human craft, without any acknowledgment of what they might replace, comes across as tone-deaf.

The robots weren't the issue. The lack of self-awareness was.