September 28, 2026
A 25-year apparel veteran puts AI to work on 12 fashion roles — one per week — with real prompts, real failures, and a verdict for each.
Every week brings another hot take about AI gutting the fashion workforce — the designer, the photographer, the buyer, the model. Most of those takes come from one of two places: people selling AI tools, or people afraid of them. Neither group has a strong incentive to show you the part where things go wrong.
So I'm going to stop speculating and start testing.
I've spent 25 years inside apparel — grew up on a garment factory floor, and helped take the Lee men's business from $5M to $200M in annual sales. I've held most of the roles people say AI is about to take. For the past year, I've also been on the other side of that equation, building AI tools for fashion at Shanley AI.
That combination puts me in an unusual spot. I know what these jobs actually require, not just what they look like from the outside. And I know where current AI tools are genuinely capable versus where they make impressive-looking demos that would fall apart in a factory or a buying meeting.
Twelve jobs, one a week, then a finale scorecard. One question each week: can AI actually do this?
The roles, in order:
The Finale: full scorecard
Each week ends with one of three verdicts:
No hype. No doom. Just the work.
Monday — This Week in AI × Fashion. The biggest AI-and-fashion story of the week, and what it actually means for the people doing the work.
Tuesday — The Test. AI goes to work on that week's role, on screen, with every prompt shown.
Wednesday — Hot Take. The insider truth about the job that most AI demos skip.
Thursday — How-To. How a real brand could use AI for this role today, step by step.
Friday — The Verdict. Can AI do the job? Plus one story from 25 years in the industry.
Show the prompts. Every test shows exactly what I typed. You should be able to run the same test yourself.
Show the failures first. A demo that only shows the good output is an ad. When a tool breaks a tech pack or renders fabric wrong, you'll see that too.
Test other people's tools, not just mine. I'll use my own apps where they genuinely fit — trend intelligence, 3D design, tech packs — and name-brand tools everywhere else. An honest test includes tools I didn't build.
Grade it like a boss would. The question isn't "is this impressive?" It's "would I sign off on this, and would it survive a factory, a buyer, or a customer?"
Fashion is one of the most demanding places to evaluate AI because every output eventually becomes something physical. A trend call becomes a sample. A tech pack becomes a garment. A buy becomes inventory that either sells through or gets marked down.
You can't hide a bad output for long. The feedback loop is brutal and fast — which makes it an honest testing ground.
This matters well beyond apparel. If you lead any creative or operational team, the question is identical: which parts of the work can AI take on today, which parts fall short, and how do you know the difference before it costs you?
The photographer job is a good preview of what this series is designed to surface. On one side, brands are already putting AI-generated imagery into their product catalogs, and every shoot that disappears also hits the assistants, stylists, retouchers, and set designers who work on it.
Meanwhile, early AI fashion imagery still struggles with fabric rendering inconsistencies and anatomical errors. Quality has improved, but the problems haven't disappeared. So which is it — does AI win the photographer job, does a human win, or is it a hybrid?
I don't know yet. That's the point. I'm going to run the test and show you what happens.
The series runs every week on Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn, and I'll collect the verdicts here on the blog as they land. If there's a fashion role you want me to put to the test, tell me in the comments.
And if you're a brand trying to figure out where AI fits in your own team before making expensive decisions, that's exactly what we help with at Shanley AI.
Let's find out who wins.