AI in the fashion industry: The role of educators in preparing a resilient future workforce

Opinion article

By Allison Ford

ICMS Program Manager (Fashion and Global Brand Management, Marketing)

Introduction

The Australian fashion and textile industry is a significant player in the global economy, contributing a reported $28 billion to Australia’s national economy and employing almost 500,000 workers [1]. This economic impact is reinforced by high levels of consumer engagement, with the average Australian purchasing 56 new clothing items annually, exceeding consumption rates in the United States (53 items), the United Kingdom (33 items) and China (30 items) [2].

The industry’s capacity to influence and shape consumer behaviour has been amplified over the past half-decade by the development and integration of generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) into digital systems. These shifts within the retail industry’s evolving digital economy highlight a pressing need for educators to integrate these developments into teaching practices to cultivate resilience and industry-relevant skill sets among graduates.

Change in Consumer Technology and Shopping Habits

Consumers are not the only ones impacted by Gen AI; the ever-growing adoption of these tools across processes will significantly affect workers within the industry, as well as the current shopping habits of active Australian consumers. These tools have already begun to displace traditional search engines such as Google as the primary source of everyday information-seeking habits. Research by McKinsey & Company [3] indicates that half of the surveyed consumers intentionally seek out AI-powered search engines. While commerce platform Shopify asserts that such agentic commerce is the next evolution of online shopping [4], which involves AI agents helping consumers browse and shop, these observations signal that AI is not a fad but a structural shift in how knowledge is accessed and evaluated.

These ever-growing technological developments compel retail brands to sustain strategic competitiveness by embedding AI systems within their marketing and operational decision-making. In this context, higher education cannot remain neutral and instead bears a responsibility to prepare graduates who can critically and ethically leverage Gen AI, not only in the production of assessment tasks but also in their broader professional practice as they transition into an increasingly AI-mediated industry.

We are living in a rapidly evolving age of AI technologies, often described as the Fourth Industrial Revolution, in which AI technologies fundamentally reshape value creation and consumption. Within this context, technological drivers are directly influencing how consumers discover, evaluate, and interact with products and marketing content, thereby demanding agile adaptation from both industry and higher education providers. This shift is already visible in early 2026, with global fashion giants like Ralph Lauren partnering with technology leader Microsoft to embed AI tools within their customer experience strategy.

Equipping Students with Industry-Aligned AI Skills

Contemporary retailers are rapidly adopting Gen AI tools to redesign their marketing and service ecosystem, blurring the boundaries between back-end operations and customer-facing experiences. As seen by Woolworths adoption of Google’s Gemini Enterprise AI service, such technologies are explicitly promoted as mechanisms to enhance customer experience and bridge the gap between sales and service. This alignment of AI tools with core marketing and service strategies creates a powerful precedent for higher education, signaling the kinds of capabilities graduates are expected to demonstrate on entry to industry.

These newly developed tools are being used in industry to test the effectiveness of customer journey within a website, and for timely analysis of traditional pricing models that allow retailers to compare a larger data set. Consequently, these emerging technologies provide institutions with a timely opportunity to integrate authentic, selected industry-aligned AI technologies into their curricula, professional practice through work-integrated learning (WIL) and assessment design, equipping graduates with genuinely industry-ready skill sets. In doing so, educators can enable students to move beyond engaging with Gen AI merely as consumers and towards deploying it as a form of strategic professional expertise within digital marketing practice.

Developing Industry-Ready Skill Sets

The marketing and fashion industry requires graduates to be work-ready, due to the speed of the industry, which requires individuals to be agile when challenged by information presented by Gen AI models.

With several key strategies educators can turn this threat into an opportunity for students’ professional development and growth:

1. Strengthen human-AI collaboration skills by engaging students in activities that require them to critically evaluate and refine Gen AI outputs with confidence.
2. Beyond the classroom, actively engage students with technological tools widely adopted in industry, such as WGSN and SketchUp, which integrate AI capabilities within their interfaces.
3. Foster cross-functional collaboration through group assessments, allowing students to operate in a human-centred dynamic environment similar to industry.
4. Encourage personal reflections in assessment tasks to promote self-awareness and critical analysis of the outputs produced by Gen AI tools.
5. Embed opportunities in curricula for students to critically engage with AI-led data analysis, encouraging them to interpret outputs, assess underlying assumptions, and evaluate the implications for decision-making in professional contexts.

Conclusion

AI is no longer a peripheral tool, but a force actively reshaping how consumers discover products, make purchasing decisions and how industry interacts with this data. AI search engines disrupt traditional e-commerce at scale, resulting in a fundamental transformation underway in how value is created and mediated in digital markets. This shift, in turn, places a critical responsibility on higher education to respond proactively by moving beyond a narrow focus on securing assessments and policing Gen AI use towards embedding meaningful, practice-oriented AI integration in teaching and learning.

When integrating the use of Gen AI tools into curricula, a deeper recalibration has become necessary, one that positions AI integration as part of core disciplinary thinking, critical inquiry, and professional practice for innovation. Graduates must not only be technically capable, but also intellectually and emotionally confident in working alongside AI tools while always questioning and interpreting outputs. This is particularly important in fields such as fashion and marketing, where originality, taste, and cultural sensitivity remain distinctly human advantages in decoding human behaviour.

Ultimately, the most valuable outcome education can offer is not the mastery of knowledge and industry-relevant Gen AI tools but the cultivation of curiosity, collaboration, adaptability, and critical agency. A sustained growth mindset will be essential for both students and educators, enabling them to navigate and ultimately shape industries that are continuously being redefined.

Acknowledgement

The author declares no conflict of interest and does not have any financial disclosures.

To cite this article:

Ford, A (2026, June 17). AI in the fashion industry: The role of educators in preparing a resilient future workforce. Scholarly Impact. International College of Management, Sydney. https://www.icms.edu.au/scholarly-impact/business-and-management/ai-in-the-fashion-industry-the-role-of-educators-in-preparing-a-resilient-future-workforce/

References

[1] Miller, A. (2026, March 20). Peak fashion body aims to rebuild local manufacturing battered by offshore supply chain interruptions. ABC News. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-21/australian-fashion-council-10-year-made-in-australia-strategy/106438602

[2] The Australia Institute. (2024, May 29). Australians revealed as the world’s biggest fashion consumers, fuelling waste crisis. https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/australians-revealed-as-worlds-biggest-fashion-consumers-fuelling-waste-crisis/

[3] Silliman, E., Boudet, J., Robinson, K., Oppong, D., & Shah, N. (2023, August 30). The new front door to the internet: Winning in the age of AI search. McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/new-front-door-to-the-internet-winning-in-the-age

[4] Shopify, (2026, April 30). Agentic commerce on Shopify: How it works. Shopify. https://www.shopify.com/au/blog/how-agentic-commerce-works