AI in Fashion: A Collective Transformation Experience

April 29, 2026
Première Vision Paris
Visions is a series of forward-looking articles that explores the world of tomorrow — its contours, models, and challenges. Through the eyes of experts from various fields, the Visions series undertakes an exploration of our societies, adopting multiple viewpoints to address several questions: How can we imagine the future today? What emerging trends or subtle signals should we pay attention to identify and anticipate new models and ways of living, creating, producing, and consuming? By gathering observations, analyses, and future-oriented insights in fields ranging from multidisciplinary creation to economics, sustainability, and new technologies, Première Vision aims to inform, inspire and provide key resources for creative Fashion professionals.

How will AI reshape the fashion industry in practice? Such was the focus of a recent event organized by the Fédération Française du Prêt-à-Porter Féminin, drawing several hundred participants and underscoring the strong interest in the topic. As in other industries, these technologies are at the heart of discussions, often accompanied by fears that machines could replace humans in manufacturing, operational, and even creative processes.

“The point isn’t whether we’re for or against AI. Otherwise, we’re only seeing the tip of this vast iceberg and reducing these agents to mere gadgets,” notes Thibaut Ledunois, Director of Operations in charge of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Fédération. “The co-founder of Data for Good, Théo Da Silva, who spoke at our event, uses the term ‘workslop’ to describe rushed, low-quality work, pointing out that AI can save time but also waste it. By casually experimenting with content using ChatGPT or Claude, we think we’re acting like informed technophiles, when in reality we’re misusing these tools. What interests us, however, is how we can use them to enhance the value proposition and strengthen companies’ competitiveness.”

Data: The New Gold for Brands

A century-old organization, the Fédération represents and advocates for entrepreneurs across the sector. In recent years, it has taken on the major transformations shaping the industry, including the development of responsible consumption, taking a defensive stance toward major platforms, changes in ways of working, and evolving business models.

“The key challenge for the industry is to start thinking of data as a resource. It’s the new gold for our companies and fashion brands.”

“The only issue is that we’ve fallen behind in compiling, structuring, and organizing this data efficiently within our organizations.” He points to persistent organizational shortcomings. “The supply chain still often runs on Excel spreadsheets, with each department managing its own data in isolation and little communication between them. A siloed culture still prevails across marketing, product, buying, and communications. This lack of consistency in data systems is holding back the effective use of AI.”

Cutting through this fog, the innovation specialist’s message is clear: “Today, the real issue is data.” Brands need to build a robust data architecture, harmonizing data across departments to enable better and faster decision-making. But that’s not all. Priority uses for AI also need to be redefined. The risk is using it without a clear purpose or objective. AI makes it easy to rebuild a landing page 20 times, testing endless variations of colors and layouts—but is that really the priority? For Ledunois, the answer is no: “The product needs to return to the center of the conversation, and I think that will increasingly be the case.” He adds: “Brands need to come back to a fundamental question: what is their value proposition? That’s what creates real differentiation. Of course, you can launch a brand in 24 hours with visuals, a creative direction, an e-commerce site, and so on. But without the product experience, without deeper reflection on that value proposition, nothing really progresses.”

The rise of “community brands” reflects the growing range of new areas of brand expression, from gaming and sport to hospitality and food. The current boom in merch illustrates this shift. Until recently, brands largely avoided the “souvenir” space, often seen as low-end and limited to printed T-shirts. But some players have reworked these products, infusing them with emotional, heritage-driven, and pop references, making them highly desirable.

Key Areas Where AI Can Deliver Real Impact

INVENTORY MANAGEMENT Brands need to stay on top of emerging tools. It is hard to discuss innovation without mentioning new social platforms that are becoming true sales channels, from TikTok, now firmly mainstream, to Pinterest, Reddit, Whatnot, and the broader streaming ecosystem. But once again, brands need to prioritize where AI is applied if they are to be best prepared for the future. Certain areas, however, are set to be deeply transformed by AI. Ledunois points to inventory management as a key example: “Used correctly, AI agents can significantly improve forecasting capabilities by refining projections and harmonizing data across departments. This is a major issue in terms of competitiveness, sustainability, and even geopolitics. It is already being applied in this way by some players, to organize stock in real time across stores and rebalance it when needed. These rebalancing systems already exist and are proving effective.”

PRICING Ledunois highlights a second area where AI can improve pricing precision: markdowns and, more broadly, price-setting. He does, however, sound a note of caution: “To improve profitability across markdowns, inventory management, and pricing, systems need to be fed with properly structured data. In practical terms, that means data that has been structured, classified, and prioritized.” This is precisely where the Fédération supports brands on a daily basis. Ledunois adds a broader perspective:

“Today, the challenge is less about pursuing growth than improving profitability. That doesn’t mean the goal of growth has disappeared, but what matters even more is competitiveness and margins. These tools make it possible to gain margin points, which can then be reinvested where it matters most and used to better compensate employees.”

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE Another major challenge will be learning how to use these technological tools to enhance the customer experience. “A consumer who today buys an item in less than three seconds on Whatnot [a live-shopping app] or TikTok Shop will, over time, approach our brands’ e-commerce sites very differently. That’s something we need to anticipate and prepare for,” says Ledunois. A further transformation is underway, this time on the commercial side: we are at the early stages of a shift from e-commerce as we know it toward so-called “agentic” commerce, driven by artificial intelligence. The impact on how we consume are likely to be significant.

Organizational impact

NEW APPROACHES TO SEO AND VISIBILITY

The first consequence is that brands will need to rethink how they approach their products. Today, searching online for a sweater typically means typing “red cashmere sweater” into Google, relying on SEO. Tomorrow, however, large language models—conversational AI systems—will not necessarily look for the same signals. They will analyze how the product is discussed across forums, social media, and media outlets, prioritizing the highest-rated product—not for its composition, but for the experience it delivers.

“Tomorrow, we’ll tell the machine: ‘I’m looking for a warm winter sweater that doesn’t itch and can be machine-washed.’ It’s a new way of writing the story of a product, a new form of storytelling, and therefore a new kind of data that brands have yet to master and will need to progressively integrate,” explains Ledunois. “Similarly, they will need to become more responsive thanks to technology. For example, they may need to respond to a request such as: ‘Find me a sweater like the one worn by Brigitte Macron during her official visit to Thailand.’”

This restructuring of e-commerce and digital ecosystems is already underway and is set to accelerate. The Fédération is also supporting brands on this front, rethinking search and discoverability in both functional and narrative terms.“This won’t change the content of a brand platform, but it will challenge those who don’t yet have one,” notes Ledunois. “This is a real issue we’re seeing among emerging brands. The job of a fashion designer has become extremely difficult.” Whereas in the past, a good product and an effective distribution system were enough, today you have to be good at everything. And there is no room for error.

“Fashion entrepreneurs are expected to be ‘eight-legged sheep’ capable of doing everything at once: creating a strong brand image, delivering a quality product, managing production timelines, e-commerce, influencer relations, and CSR issues.”
REPRIORITIZING TASKS

For certain low-value tasks, AI can deliver significant time savings. “If the brand platform is well constructed, and content creation needs as well as product page improvements are clearly defined, the agent—the machine—will be able to update product pages as required and generate content,” says Ledunois, adding a note of caution: “This presupposes a clear, coherent brand platform and an AI that has been properly trained.” For its part, the Fédération monitors the range of technological solutions available on the market. Ledunois takes a pragmatic approach: “Each week, I meet with around ten start-ups offering solutions for specific tasks, for example how to build a dashboard.” Some brands will choose to work with tools such as Claude, in which case “we provide them with the training resources to use it as effectively as possible.” Others, he notes, “do not want to spend time prompting an AI” and will instead opt for tools that have already been sourced and listed on the Fédération’s platform, with their respective advantages and limitations clearly outlined.

RETHINKING DECISION-MAKING

AI is also set to fundamentally transform how decisions are made within companies. Historically driven by instinct, decision-making will increasingly be built on data. For Ledunois, this shift carries almost philosophical implications for the sector. One question, among others, illustrates this: what place will instinct hold in fashion, both today and in the medium to long term?

If we break down the stages of decision-making, much of the reporting can already be handled by machines, from accounting oversight to invoice processing. But the question of creative applications will soon come into play as well. Here again, clarity is essential. Brands must be able to articulate the fundamentals: what am I offering? How am I doing it? What do I want to bring? This forms the underlying framework—the architecture that is then translated into content, product pages, and more. It must be narrative, explanatory, sincere, and deliver real added value. Among the business models identified as particularly promising through the lens of AI are those that place craftsmanship at their core.

“What matters is the creation of value. Everything else, AI allows us to delegate. Until now, brands have often argued that including sizes 44, 46, and 48 in their collections was too costly. With AI, that obstacle disappears. It allows us to go further.”
NEW ROLES

When it comes to jobs, “The challenge will not be to replace designers with robots,” Ledunois says. Some roles, however, will come under pressure, particularly in customer service and e-commerce backlogs, where this is already a reality. This will require brands to think about reskilling from a workforce and social responsibility perspective. “We will need to support roles that are evolving,” he explains. “That is what corporate social responsibility is about. It goes beyond environmental issues.”

Another implication concerns how teams are structured. In a world shaped by AI and data, greater cross-functionality will be essential. “There is no choice,” he says. “Within brands, transformation or innovation leaders will need to ensure this shift, fostering collaboration between departments that do not traditionally work together.” Drawing on his experience across sectors such as mobility, healthcare, and energy, Ledunois points out that innovation leaders typically play a key role in encouraging collaboration, tracking technological developments, and instilling a culture of curiosity and risk-taking. “This remains a major gap in the fashion industry,” he observes. “There are so few examples that I can only think of two.” He stresses the importance of appointing internal ambassadors on these topics, both to raise awareness around cybersecurity and data governance, and to encourage teams to experiment with new tools and engage with start-ups. Based on this experience, he identifies three key levers before selecting tools:

“Listen internally to process-related challenges, look at the data on economic performance, and then make informed choices about the tools to test, implement, and deploy within an overall architecture.”

Ledunois remains optimistic. Behind the anxiety surrounding AI, he sees curiosity. Panic, he suggests, can be a catalyst: “It creates movement. Brands are aware and are taking action.” The scale of the transformation is considerable, and meeting the challenge will require collective effort. In recent years, companies have often approached issues such as CSR regulations or the metaverse with a sense of apprehension. The shift now, he argues, is to move away from fear and toward curiosity. Ledunois concludes: “Théo Da Silva, whom I mentioned earlier, says there are two options with AI. Imagine being in a car: either you behave like Wile E. Coyote, speeding ahead without looking and eventually falling because you didn’t look around you, or you take the approach of a Formula 1 driver, staying on the track, knowing the course, and mastering the brakes. That is what matters most—you need brakes, and you need to know how to use them.” In the meantime, the next key date is 1 July, with the launch of Flair, aimed at addressing the business challenges facing the fashion industry. It marks a new step in this collective transformation of the sector.

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