During the Fall 2025 shows in February, the Fashionista team asked designers about their use of rising technology like AI. Most of them honestly balked at the idea, indicating a general reluctance to embrace (or at least admit to embracing) AI tools in their processes. But in the six months since then, AI has become an even more all-pervading force in our lives. So as we approached New York Fashion Week again this September, we wondered, has sentiment around it changed at all?

In short, yes. Fashion designers, like all of us, are no longer able to avoid the AI conversation. When our editors asked the question again at the Spring 2026 shows, designers showed more openness to the topic and how it impacts their work. Some used it in the development processes for their collections or to edit prints and visuals, while others said they only use it for things like email and productivity management. Some merely haven’t gotten around to figuring it out, and a few expressed concern around AI’s potential to displace creative jobs.

Read on for what Grace Ling, Brandon Maxwell, Stacey Bendet and other New York designers had to say about the topic of AI.

Jane Wade

“I’m a very tactile, creative person, so we don’t necessarily use AI for the development of our collection, but where I do use AI and AI tools is in my social media rollout. We’ll put up some sort of collection teaser just days before the show where I actually used ChatGPT to help me render, and then I use this really cool app to help me turn it into a video. I love AI. I think it’s similar to Photoshop and Illustrator and CAD design. They’re all just resources and tools for us to expand creatively. So I’m really into tech integration into the show.”

Joseph McRae

“AI… baby you can write an email for me real quick, and just several documents and curations and things of that nature. I have a degree in electrical engineering, so I think when we talk about technology, and even in a broader space of AI and what that looks like, my collection and my craft is rooted in that. When I create these shapes and these volumes and these textures, it’s like almost a reverse engineering space because I am a self-taught designer, so I see what I want in my head and we reverse engineer that to bring that into life. I think that would be my connection to technology within fashion, which is not typical but it’s super fun. But listen, AI, you can write an email for me any day.”

Stephanie Suberville of Heirlome

“We don’t really use AI a lot. I actually am very old school, I don’t even sketch on the computer. I really hated Illustrator in college. I would say the only way I have used AI is to expand pictures because I am very hands-on and I do a lot of my own retouching. It’s cool for retouching because it makes things a lot easier. Whenever there’s a new technology, I tend to be the last one to get on board. Especially with sketching, I feel like I lose something once I put it in the computer. It doesn’t have that drama or that effect and usually I just give my factory my own hand-drawn sketches.”

Tinka Weener of Songs of Siren

“Honestly, I haven’t [used AI]. Of course people have to use it at some point, but for now I don’t want to take advantage of it yet because I really believe in fairly paying all the creatives that I work with and I don’t want to take away jobs of anyone.”

Tyler McGillivary

“We use AI in small-scale photo editing ways. Let’s say we have to extend a print, we’ll use AI generation to extend the print from one section to another, which is a super helpful tool and I look at it as not that different from Photoshop. 

“I have a complicated relationship to AI. I do see it very actively, within my own life and with my friends, it takes a lot of jobs away from creative people, and I don’t support that. But I do think it would be unwise and fully ignorant to pretend that you don’t have to use it as a creative person. This is a reality, and so for me, it’s about using it as a tool, and having really strong boundaries around it. Like we wouldn’t AI-generate a model for our site. We wouldn’t use it to replace something or take jobs away from people that we’d work with otherwise. But again, I don’t personally feel that I can have a super strong judgment around other creatives using it because I use it in small ways, so where is the line around it? I think it’s a really complicated question… I think it’s about having really strict regulations around it and I don’t see that happening. So I’m hopeful that that will change in the next few years.”

Grace Ling

“Of course I embrace technology and I love technology. It’s such a fine line and misconception because people think that technology is going to replace craft. But I think the way we incorporate technology does not replace craft, it amplifies craft and it pushes it further because, at the end of the day, something that is truly designed with real taste, real details, real sense of composition — those kinds of things can never be replaced with AI, no matter how much information you feed them. We don’t use AI in our designs at all; we use AI to reply to emails, to do logistical stuff.”

Brandon Maxwell

“I do not use AI. I’ve literally just figured out email, basically. I’ve always had trouble with technology. People are like, ‘I use ChatGPT.’ I’m like, where is it located? Is it an app or? I have no idea. But once I learn, I’ll be great at it. It’s just I’ve been busy making a show since it’s become really popular.”

Stacey Bendet of Alice + Olivia

“We began this season using AI to develop a lot of our embroidery and beading, and it allowed us to create things with such intricacy and detail, and I hope everyone appreciates that.”

Kate Barton

“Our brand has been very subject to the AI field. We give off that vibe and sometimes people will even think our clothes are AI with some of the photoshoots we do. So we really played into that. It’s been a big help to our business recently. We partnered with an AI company for the show — at the show, we did a 360° AI projector screen video that gave an illusion of our clothes walking the runway, but on an AI screen.”

Jenni Kayne

“I know the team definitely uses AI. I use it for myself personally, just writing letters, and I feel like it’s the perfect editor, but I’m yet to use it creatively.”

Patricio Campillo of Campillo

“[I don’t use AI] for the design process, but for planning. I’ve put together a five-year plan, a very solid one with monthly deliverables; it really creates a route to where you want to be in the future. I don’t think I want to include AI in the creative process just yet because I feel that I have not found a way where my feelings and my ideas can be portrayed in that medium without being modified by it. The purity of my ideas is not as accurate on AI as when I am sketching it myself or when I’m thinking about it myself. It’s a great tool, but I think it also creates limits because it does so much work for you. I don’t think AI has a soul. You cannot code what I’m feeling.”

Hillary Taymour of Collina Strada

“No, I’m just using dead stock garbage from the studio instead.”

Note: These quotes have been lightly edited for clarity.

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