Hola Sugarcups,
The Mood Board is Dead!
Imagine it: You’re at a vibrant, innovative technology event and you overhear a conversation that’s so captivating you just stop in your tracks. Well, that was me last month when I was in a discussion with a senior designer working for a fashion house in London, a mid-sized one. Here’s a person who had seen successive waves of “this is going to change everything” about AI, but remains grounded. This is what they said. “And what is really weird about AI is you feel like you need to justify yourself as a decision-maker.” It made me think. We’ve been praising AI for years now – but how often have we reflected on its impact on human creativity? What is it removing from us? And how is it forcing designers to perform? So, what are designers actually doing right now?
You won’t believe what they’re up to!
What AI Has Actually Replaced (Be Honest)
Let’s be honest for a moment. The fashion world is a little brittle, but it’s not helping anything to deny how much of the grunt work of early-stage design the generative AIs have come in and taken over. Time-consuming, laborious moodboards? A thing of the past, since AI can generate quickly refined, iterated boards in mere minutes or even seconds. Just type, for example, “A 1970s Moroccan textile pattern with Transformative Teal palette and with references to Art Deco architecture,” and hundreds of visual references will be yours.
Print design? You got it. We used to go to experts for hand-illustrated or computer-generated textiles. Now, with just a brief, AI can generate technically ready-to-use prints.
AI now takes the lead on the first phase of colour experimentation, the drawing, the mood boarding and campaign planning, and quickly predicts what fabric will look like on the body.
Consider ASOS. They’ve rolled AI into every part of their design operation this year, on a global scale, and trained over 100 designers. It’s a definite sign that AI is the way of the industry. But what does that really mean?
What Ai Can Not Do
After interviews with designers from top-end and high street stores, in London and worldwide:
The AI doesn’t decide. OK, yes it can spit out thousands of options for you, but only you have the taste to know which one is right. That’s a function of a number of years’ experience, market knowledge, brand knowledge and know-how. No model can be trained to do that.
AI cannot understand culture. A design could be technically perfect but unhinged for the contemporary market. Nobody but a human could tell us why. I looked into the intersection of culture and fashion in my Fashion Core Trends piece earlier this year, and it isn’t measurable through image analysis.
Artificial intelligence cannot build relationships. The world of fashion is more than brainstorming a style then having the production team bring it to life. It’s understanding what kind of embroidery or printing your supplier can do, whether a particular fabric will drape on a set of curves, or how much a specific machine costs. That insight comes from being human.
AI Cannot Propagate Brand Truth. Great brands have a unique, inimitable brand truth. You recognise their work on sight because they have a lens like no other. Pharrell’s Louis Vuitton brand truth moment (covered here) demonstrates you can’t prompt this. Only humans can bring the vision.
So What Are Designers Doing?
Successful designers who I speak with say they are spending less time on this:
Mood boards.
Initial color exploration.
Draft print design.
And more of these:
Final touch (taste & brand awareness). Knowing all the reasons why the AI suggestion was almost there. What is “Right”. Building a better cultural & market knowledge. Building stronger relationships with the designers. Writing better, more complete briefs.
Your results are only as good as your question! When a designer is able to create a rich and culturally sensitive brief for a generative AI tool, the results can be amazing. And this is a new skill-a new design literacy.
The Existential Part (Please Bear With Me!)
You can then focus on the decision level. For example, you could choose to spend your time designing mood boards, and when an AI takes care of this, what are you left with? The quality of your decision.
It’s painful, but those who thrive are your skillful good doers who now have the time to deliver impact. Those who are struggling have the skills that got them through the jobs you are now automating.
What Does AI In Design Mean For The Future?
As design moves to the end game of decision making, taste, culture, brand truth and relationships, we need to revaluate how we train designers. Taste is learned in a workshop. It is learnt through a deep knowledge of fashion history, culture, materials, manufacturing and how people really wear clothes. Design schools used to teach this through hands on, sensorial immersion; more important now than ever.
Now, with AI taking over visual creation, we need human beings with a connection. I delved into this in The Tactile Rebellion.
And the most fashionable designer of 2026 will be the one who adds culture, sensory knowledge and taste to the interpretations generated by AI.
They’ll always be part of the industry and, quite frankly, they’ve earned it!
Jasmin x
P.S. This connects directly to what’s happening at the consumer end of fashion, where the same shift is playing out. AI is creating infinite visual fashion content, and the people who’ve developed genuine taste are becoming the ones who can navigate it. More on that over on my AI & Sustainability section.
