AI, Fashion, and the Bit No One Really Knows How to Feel About

AI is everywhere right now. It’s in fashion headlines, whispered about in studios, argued over in cafés from Shoreditch to Seoul. It’s one of those topics where everyone suddenly has a very strong opinion. It’s either the future of everything or the death of creativity as we know it.

So this isn’t a think-piece pretending to have answers.

It’s just our honest take. As a small brand. As people who actually make things.

Let’s Be Honest: We Have Used It

We’ll start there.

We’re not anti-AI. We’re not pretending we live off-grid with a sketchbook and a candle. We use it. Mostly for very unglamorous stuff:

•          speeding up admin and marketing bits

•          learning things quicker

•          fixing random e-commerce headaches

•          visualising ideas, testing things, sanity-checking

It saves time. And time, right now, is expensive.

Running a small brand is intense. Everything moves fast. If you slow down too much, you fall behind. That’s just the landscape.

So yeah, AI helps us keep up. Sometimes it’s the difference between staying in the room or being pushed out of it.

There’s No Denying AI Can Be Useful

At a wider industry level, it does some things well:

•          It helps brands optimise inventory and supply chains, which in theory could reduce overproduction and waste.

•          It personalises recommendations, making it easier for people to discover things they actually like.

•          It lets designers visualise ideas quickly, without sampling endlessly or burning time and resources.

That part makes sense.

And this is why some people argue that AI belongs around the design process, helping it along, supporting it. But not replacing it.

Because the actual design bit? That messy bit? The “this might work but also might be awful” bit?

Machines aren’t great at that.

We Tried AI Content. And It Put Us Off.

We’re not going to pretend we didn’t experiment. We did. Like everyone else.

AI images. AI content. Testing the waters.

And honestly?

It didn’t feel right.

Once you start noticing how many brands are using AI imagery, especially mass-produced ones, you can’t unsee it.

Same faces. Same lighting. Same slightly glossy, slightly empty feeling.

It looks almost cool. But not quite human.

And when everyone does it, it all blends into one big visual soup. Nothing sticks. Nothing feels real… And it just makes you not trust it.

That was the moment we stepped back.

The Big Issue: Everything Starts Sounding the Same

This is where AI gets uncomfortable for fashion, as well as other industries.

AI pulls from what already exists. Which means if everyone uses it in the same way, everything slowly drifts toward the middle.

Same silhouettes. Same aesthetics. Same language. Same “vibe”.

You can usually tell when something’s been done by AI. Not because it’s bad, but because it lacks friction. No awkward decisions. No strange details. No personality.

And creativity needs those imperfections.

Fast Fashion Isn’t Fast Anymore. It’s Instant.

Fast fashion used to mean a few weeks from trend to rail. Now it’s days. Sometimes hours.

See something trending. Scrape the data. Generate designs. Push product.

There’s no pause to ask why. No time to question whether something should exist. It’s just output.

And that’s not the only problem.

AI scrapes content from everywhere. Including small brands who actually work hard on their designs and imagery. Sometimes it pulls exact silhouettes and very similar images. Sometimes straight-up lifted content.

We literally had a customer message us recently saying they’d found one of our listings on a Chinese website.

That hits differently.

When everything is available instantly, it loses weight. It stops meaning anything.

Why We Don’t Design With AI

This part matters to us.

We don’t design clothing with AI. Not because it’s evil. Not because we’re scared of it.

It just doesn’t align with how we think creativity works.

Our ideas come from:

•          walking around cities

•          people-watching

•          history

•          nature

•          subcultures

•          things that feel slightly out of time

That stuff can’t be scraped from a dataset.

We might use AI to quickly visualise something once the idea already exists in our heads. But the idea itself has to come from somewhere human.

Otherwise everything would look the same.

Why We Don’t Use AI for Forecasting Either

This one’s simple.

We don’t trust algorithms to tell us what people will want next. We trust our instincts more than spreadsheets.

We look at what people are actually wearing. How they move. What they keep re-buying. What they come back for.

Most of our stuff is made-to-order. Sometimes, if there’s real demand, we’ll do a small run.

AI might make sense for huge supply chains trying to reduce errors.

For us, intuition beats prediction.

The Weirdest Part: Not Knowing What’s Real Anymore

There are already entire websites filled with AI-generated content. No humans. No process. Just output.

That’s the unsettling bit.

When you don’t know what’s real, trust becomes everything.

Which is why authenticity isn’t a buzzword anymore. It’s survival.

Showing the process. Being transparent. Letting things be a bit messy. Letting people see the human behind the work.

That’s what cuts through now.

So Where Do We Land?

AI isn’t the enemy. But it’s not the saviour either.

Used lightly, it can be super helpful. Used blindly, it can really flatten things.

For us, creativity still has to come from humans. From lived experience. From intuition. From mistakes.

AI can support that process. It can’t replace it.

And if everything becomes instant, automated, and identical…

what becomes rare?

That’s the question we keep coming back to.