Fashion educators also say that where students are choosing to engage with AI in their creative practices, brands have taken note — and, in some cases, commissioned visual work — from those seen to be experimenting with new technologies, critically and thoughtfully.
“A lot of our students are doing really fascinating things where they’ve built their own GAN [generative adversarial network, a type of image-generating machine learning system], and fed it with their own visuals like photography,” Louca says. “Where it becomes really exciting is when AI doesn’t spit out a finalized design, but shows you patterns that perhaps you yourself are unaware exist in your practice. So it’s giving them a point of friction to stand back and think: ‘OK, interesting, that design is great. But now I need to step in and make that pocket actually function.’”
For those applying to more creative roles like design and fashion film, experts say it pays to be able to talk about every step that led you to an outcome or an application of AI.
“Use AI tools if they feel suitable to show your mock-ups and ideas. But then, in terms of the interview, portfolios and websites, we’re seeing things evolve to really focus on process,” says Thompson, who suggests that being able to talk about the visual research and analysis that got you to a final image or design is what carries the most weight.
“At the end of it, the outcome is nice, but employers want to see whether you could redo it again if the technology failed, or if you were in a space where you needed to think of even more ideas. We talk a lot about helicopter pitches — being able to talk about yourself out loud as well as written. So, here’s who I am, this is what I do, here’s my approach and my process,” she says.
Where knowledge is easier to come by via AI search, emphasizing your awareness of the bigger picture is key. “To be employable, you still need a really good understanding of the whole fashion system,” says Lois Baile, acting course leader for LCF’s Fashion MBA. “Knowledge is a commodity now, but you’ve still got to have that basic understanding to know whether something is wrong, or just rubbish.”
Read the room and sell yourself
This ability to zoom out and understand how AI fits within the bigger picture applies once you’re inside an organization, too, where career advisors say that AI knowledge presents a huge opportunity for progression, if communicated with humility. Where a strong point of view on AI and its applications is recommended to students explaining their practice, career experts emphasize the value in taking time to understand the nuances of the business you’re working for, before suggesting how the tech could be introduced.
“You have to learn the business first,” says Karen Harvey, CEO and founder of Karen Harvey Consulting, a luxury advisory firm that helps place talent. Harvey underlines how luxury brands in particular will likely be much slower with AI adoption than young people would expect, because the creatives within them are particularly worried about their work being watered down. “I think one of the major skillsets that we all need to learn as we’re coming into our careers is: read the room,” she says. “It’s all about the right person, right place, right time, right amount.”