Skip to main content<p>Van de Velde is a lingerie group that has been building luxury lingerie since 1919 and owns the premium brands Marie Jo, Primadonna and Sarda. It is present internationally through a network of some 4,000 specialty stores and its own retail chains. Van de Velde needs thousands of product images to support that retailer network, its own retail chains and the marketing of its brands, and successful product lines regularly receive new variants, so the group examined whether AI could extend existing photography in a controlled and high-quality way. Buzzworks built a custom Visual AI pipeline with custom-trained models that reuses existing photo shoot material to produce hyperrealistic packshots and lifestyle images for colour variants of existing products. The work started with a research phase in which several routes were explored, with attention to ethical use of AI and quality control, leading to a proof of concept that adapted packshots and marketing images of existing products to new fabrics, colours and textures, in order to validate whether recolours meet Van de Velde's quality standards and to establish how much efficiency could be gained within existing processes. The pipeline is built on open source AI models, chosen for control, transparency, adaptability and a privacy-first approach to data; models are trained for specific recolouring tasks, and multiple models, parameters and processing steps are combined into a multi-step pipeline with QA gates tuned to the way Van de Velde's teams work. The pipeline does not replace photo shoots, it supports a targeted extension of them, with existing photography forming the basis for colour variants of proven products. The engagement moved from R&D to a production-ready pipeline in 10 weeks. The first delivery covered recoloured packshots and photo shoot images for colour variants of existing products, at master resolution, reviewed on colour-calibrated screens, and more than 750 images were generated at master resolution. Alongside the technology, Buzzworks advised Van de Velde on where Visual AI adds the most value: which existing product lines and colour variants take priority, how generated recolours fit within existing workflows, and how quality and governance stay under control as volume grows. The result is a scalable capacity that Van de Velde manages itself, trained on its own brands and embedded in the existing quality process. The services involved were Visual AI, AI pipeline development, custom-trained models and strategic AI advice. The engagement ran in 2025. Buzzworks is based in Belgium and works internationally.</p>