Desigual casts Elon Musk’s daughter opposite a robot that won’t obey

Desigual has cast Vivian Jenna Wilson, Elon Musk’s estranged daughter, alongside a malfunctioning humanoid robot for Born to Disobey, its FW26 brand campaign turning AI, automation and human unpredictability into a pointed gag.

The robot, DESI84, is supposedly built to help with everyday tasks.

Wilson has other ideas. She walks it on a leash, uses it as a golf tee and repeatedly tries to teach it how to pronounce “Desigual”. Eventually, the machine starts banging its head against a wall.

“He was designed to obey. Not me,” Wilson says.

The casting gives the joke another layer. Musk has put artificial intelligence and humanoid robotics at the centre of businesses including xAI and Tesla, whose Optimus project makes the visual resemblance hard to miss. Neither Desigual nor Wilson explicitly calls DESI84 an Optimus parody, but the association does not need much explaining.

Wilson has also criticised AI’s impact on creative industries, arguing that automated systems risk displacing artists, photographers and other creative workers.

The film was directed by PSG, and produced by ProdCo x Contrario, with creative direction from Desigual’s Alexandra Sanhueza.

It lands amid a wider creative pushback against automation. We recently covered fashion pushing back on AI, while fashion’s relationship with machines looked rather different when drones replaced catwalk models.

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