AI is coming for fashion and coming for us all. Well, that is the scary headline, anyway. It will replace designers, steal jobs, rip off creative work, and drain humanity out of an industry built on human expression. This is a very valid fear. However, there is no use in having such a doomsday approach to the undeniable reality that AI is changing our world. We must look at how AI is being used in fashion right now.
Inside the Fashionology Summit: What Industry Leaders Are Saying About AI
This June, I was lucky enough to attend the Fashionology Summit in New York, hosted by All Things Fashion Tech. The event, held at the Glasshouse on the West Side Highway, was intimidating — tons of industry leaders and thinkers gathered. There were a few things that really stuck with me after the event. Depop’s Jill Fisher said one thing in particular: “AI has no real taste. Humans do.” AI is definitely the future for how the fashion industry will create systems to understand consumers, but the human understanding of what a consumer craves and the idea of taste are more valuable than ever. That’s humans’ competitive edge over tech: something an agentic model will never quite master.
This is exactly what the CFDA discussed in their summit write-up: technology is a powerful tool, but it is not the whole answer to anything. A consumer does not want an algorithm picking which unknown designer gets a big break or deciding what closes a runway show. However, having a tool that can chew through thousands of data points, help a brand understand demand, or make it less miserable to find one specific thing online? I’ll take that every time.
How AI Is Reshaping Fashion Buying and Merchandising
Look at buying and merchandising. Those roles run on instinct—knowing what people will want before they know it themselves —but they also drown in spreadsheets. Vogue Business has written about how AI is reshaping that side of the business, as companies lean on new tools to make sense of customer and product data they were already sitting on.
If a piece of software can figure out how many black T-shirts to reorder, why is a buyer still doing that math by hand? Hand the obvious stuff to the machine. Save the human for the harder call while spotting the designer nobody’s heard of yet.
Meet the AI Tools Changing the Way We Shop for Fashion
Shopping has the same problem, weirdly. We’ve never had more options, and somehow it’s never been harder to find the one thing you actually want.
That’s the gap former Stitch Fix COO Julie Bornstein is trying to close with Daydream, an AI-powered fashion search engine built on generative AI, machine learning, and computer vision. The company raised $50 million for it in 2024. Instead of clicking through twelve filters hoping something matches what’s in your head, the idea is that the tool actually understands what you mean when you describe it.
The Phia Controversy and Why AI Transparency Matters
Daydream isn’t alone out there, either. AI shopping tools are becoming a normal part of how fashion works now. Phia — co-founded by Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni — compares prices across retailers. But Phia is also a good example of why “embrace the technology” can’t mean “give the company a pass.” Inc. reported in 2026 that Phia’s browser extension had allegedly been inserting affiliate codes at checkout without users really doing anything to trigger it, which could’ve redirected commissions its way. Phia said it followed the rules and called it unintentional. None of that convinces me AI is bad for fashion. It convinces me transparency actually matters, and that it’s not optional. New tech always opens up new ways to help people — and new ways to quietly take advantage of them. The law needs to catch up. People deserve to know when they’re dealing with AI, creators deserve real protection for their work, and companies need to answer for what their tools are doing behind the scenes, not just when a journalist notices.
Fashion and Tech Are Officially in the Same Room
There’s a bigger shift happening too. Vogue just announced that Vogue World 2027 is heading to San Francisco, a city that has nothing to do with fashion history and everything to do with tech. Fashion and tech aren’t circling each other from a distance anymore. They’re in the same room now. That doesn’t mean every new tool is a good one. Fashionology made that pretty clear too. The real test isn’t whether something is new; it’s whether it solves an actual problem, and who it actually serves.
The Verdict: AI Can Predict Demand, But Taste Is Still Ours
Fashion has survived tech shakeups before. E-commerce rewired how we shop. Social media rewired who gets to shape what we want. AI is just the next one. So I don’t think this is really a choice between protecting human creativity and letting AI in. I think the actual choice is using AI for the parts it’s genuinely good at, and keeping the rest for ourselves.
Let it crunch the data, predict demand, track down the dress I can’t find anywhere.
Taste, though? That one’s still ours.
Sources:
CFDA — “Inside the Fashionology Summit 2026”
Vogue Business — “How Fashion Buyers and Merchandisers Are Adapting to the Age of AI”
Inc. — “Phoebe Gates’s Startup Phia Was Just Accused of ‘Cookie Stuffing.’ Here’s What Happens Next”
Vogue — “For 2027, Vogue World Is Headed Out West Again—This Time, to San Francisco”
Author: Carolina Lenzo
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Fashion Law Journal
FASHION LAW JOURNAL INSIDER
Join designers, brand founders and fashion lawyers who get the biggest brand battles, IP fights and career moves in fashion law, straight to their inbox.
