Guest Post by Claudia Gordilho
Claudia Gordilho has spent the last 15+ years working across fashion, law, and digital media. In this guest post, she offers a thoughtful take on AI literacy—what it means for sustainable fashion, and why critical thinking might be your brand’s most important tool going forward.
AI Literacy for Sustainable Fashion: Why Critical Thinking Is Your Brand’s Next Competitive Edge
“It’s all down to how you control [the equipment], and whether you’re controlling it—and not the other way around… It’s all extensions of what’s coming out of our heads… you’ve got to have it inside your head to be able to get it out at all anyway… It’s like saying, ‘Give a man a Les Paul guitar and he becomes Eric Clapton’—and it’s not true. Give a man an amplifier and a synthesizer, and he doesn’t become us.”
— Pink Floyd, on the role of technology in their creative process
In the creative industries, this sentiment rings truer than ever. Whether it’s synthesizers in music or artificial intelligence in fashion, the tool is only as powerful as the mind guiding it. Today, AI is transforming how fashion brands design, produce, and engage—from predictive trend analysis to automated design generation. For sustainable fashion, this opens exciting new possibilities—but also calls for a new kind of fluency.
AI literacy is no longer optional. It’s the skill that allows brand leaders to align innovation with values, creativity with intention, and efficiency with ethics. Without it, even the most forward-thinking brands risk losing control of their narrative—and their mission.
In this post, we’ll explore:
- What AI literacy actually means
- Why it matters for sustainable fashion brands
- How AI is changing the creative and strategic process
- The risks of misusing or misunderstanding AI
- What a future-ready, AI-literate fashion team looks like
1. What Is AI Literacy—And Why Does It Matter for Fashion?
Let’s begin by clearing up a common misconception: AI literacy is not about becoming a programmer or a machine learning expert. Just as giving someone a Les Paul guitar won’t make them Eric Clapton, simply having access to AI tools won’t make someone a visionary designer or strategist. The key lies not in the tool itself, but in the ability to think critically about how and why it’s used.
The term “literacy” itself has evolved from reading and writing to interpreting complex systems—from digital to media, and now AI. Drawing from Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy, literacy means not just decoding information but also understanding one’s context and agency within it. In this light, AI literacy means being able to “read the world” of AI—not as passive users, but as active decision-makers shaping how it’s used in fashion. It means:
- Understanding what AI can—and cannot—do
- Evaluating AI outputs with a critical eye
- Identifying embedded biases or unsustainable assumptions
- Integrating AI into creative processes in ways that align with brand values and social responsibility
More than a technical skill, AI literacy is a mindset grounded in critical thinking, ethical reflection, and informed decision-making. For fashion professionals, it offers a path to engage with AI not passively or reactively, but consciously and strategically—as part of a broader effort to build a more just, transparent, and sustainable industry.
2. Co-Creating with AI: The New Creative Dynamic
There’s a lingering fear that AI will replace creativity—that designers will be pushed aside by algorithms generating infinite options. But just as Pink Floyd reminded us that “the equipment isn’t actually thinking of what to do any of the time,” AI doesn’t invent—it responds. It doesn’t imagine—it remixes.
When approached with intention, AI becomes a powerful collaborator, not a competitor. It can expand a designer’s toolkit in ways that support experimentation, efficiency, and sustainability. For example:
- Generating mood boards or design variations based on real-time trend analysis
- Suggesting materials or color palettes that align with sustainability goals
- Creating digital prototypes to reduce physical waste and sampling cycles
- Exploring creative combinations that might not occur through human intuition alone
But here’s the catch: AI only works as well as the direction it’s given. A tool is only as strong as the hands—and minds—that shape it. Co-creating with AI isn’t about stepping back; it’s about stepping into a new role—one where creativity is filtered through critical thinking and purposeful use of data.
In this context, the designer becomes a conductor, not a coder—guiding inputs, setting boundaries, and making choices that reflect human vision. Fashion, after all, is about more than function or form. It’s storytelling. It’s emotion. It’s cultural meaning. Those aren’t things an algorithm can replicate—they’re what AI must be taught to respect.
And that’s where AI literacy becomes indispensable: it gives creative teams the insight to shape AI as a medium, not just a machine.
3. Why AI Literacy Is Crucial for Sustainable Brand Strategy
For sustainable fashion brands, the promise of AI goes far beyond trend forecasting or personalization—it offers the potential to transform how we minimize waste, optimize resources, and create meaningful customer experiences. But without a critical lens, these same tools can undermine the very values brands are trying to uphold.
Used wisely, AI can help brands:
- Forecast demand with greater accuracy, reducing overproduction
- Streamline inventory and logistics, minimizing excess and emissions
- Personalize customer engagement, lowering return rates and improving satisfaction
- Track sustainability KPIs using AI-powered dashboards and sensors
But here’s where it gets complicated: not all AI tools are created with sustainability in mind. A model trained on fast fashion data may prioritize speed and volume over environmental impact. Generative content tools might produce green claims that sound appealing—but lack substance. And the energy required to train and run large-scale AI systems can quietly erode sustainability gains.
This is why AI literacy is strategic, not just technical. It empowers brand leaders and teams to ask the hard questions:
- Where is this data coming from?
- What assumptions are built into this tool?
- Does this system align with our sustainability framework—or contradict it?
Without this critical perspective, there’s a risk of implementing AI that looks innovative on the surface but reinforces the same unsustainable patterns the industry is trying to break. In other words, fashion brands can’t afford to treat AI as a black box—they must approach it as a living system that interacts with ethics, ecology, and brand identity.
AI literacy ensures that sustainability remains more than a brand value. It becomes a guiding principle in how technology is evaluated, integrated, and scaled.
4. Avoiding the Pitfalls: Ethics, Authorship, and Accountability
Every creative tool comes with risks—but with AI, the stakes are amplified. Without clear understanding and critical oversight, brands can unintentionally cross ethical lines, compromise authenticity, or even damage consumer trust.
Here are just a few pitfalls fashion brands face in the AI era:
- Authorship ambiguity: Who owns a design that was generated by AI—especially if the AI was trained on the work of others?
- Cultural bias: Does your AI reflect diverse aesthetics and values, or is it replicating narrow, dominant-worldview norms?
- Brand dilution: Are AI-generated outputs truly in line with your visual language, tone, and values—or are they just fast and functional?
- Transparency issues: Are customers aware when they’re interacting with AI-generated content, images, or communication?
These questions aren’t just technical—they’re reputational. Without AI literacy, teams may deploy tools without realizing their creative, legal, or ethical implications. And in today’s culture of heightened accountability, that kind of oversight can quickly become a liability.
AI literacy provides the foundation for thoughtful, ethical decision-making. It helps creative and strategic teams develop a shared vocabulary to ask questions such as:
- Whose work was this tool trained on?
- What biases might it replicate or reinforce?
- Is this output reflective of the story we want to tell?
- Where do we draw the line between inspiration and automation?
Just as sustainable fashion asks brands to consider the impact of materials, labor, and supply chains, ethical AI use demands transparency, intention, and a commitment to oversight. It’s not about avoiding the use of AI—it’s about using it in ways that honor your values and your audience.
5. Future-Ready Fashion: Building Teams That Can Think With AI
The future of fashion won’t be fully automated—it will be augmented. The brands that lead in the years ahead won’t be the ones with the flashiest tech stack. They’ll be the ones with teams that know how to think with AI—creatively, critically, and collaboratively.
Here’s the good news: embracing AI literacy doesn’t mean overhauling your team or hiring a fleet of data scientists. It means empowering your existing creatives, strategists, and sustainability leads with the understanding and language to engage confidently with intelligent tools.
A future-ready fashion team might include:
- Designers fluent in AI prompting, using generative tools as part of their visual exploration
- Creative strategists who can evaluate the ethics and brand alignment of AI outputs
- Sustainability officers who use AI to measure impact, not just efficiency
- Merchandisers who interpret AI-generated trend forecasts within the brand’s cultural lens
- Brand leaders who know the right questions to ask—and who ensure tech decisions reflect company values
In other words, AI literacy becomes a shared competency across departments, not just a niche skill for one role. It fosters cross-functional collaboration, sharper creative thinking, and stronger alignment between innovation and intention.
Much like learning how to “play” a new instrument, it’s not about mastering every technical detail—it’s about understanding the possibilities, setting boundaries, and making deliberate choices. That’s what AI literacy makes possible.
6. Conclusion: Critical Thinking is the New Sustainability Tool
Pink Floyd’s words still resonate: “It’s all down to how you control [the equipment]—and not the other way around.” That truth applies as much to fashion and AI as it once did to music and analog synths. The technology may evolve, but the creative responsibility remains in human hands.
In the fast-moving world of fashion innovation, AI literacy is not just a technical skill—it’s a mindset. It enables designers, strategists, and sustainability leads to use AI with intention, question its outputs, and ensure that technology serves the brand—not the other way around.
AI will reshape the industry—but it doesn’t have to reshape your values. With the right understanding, sustainable fashion brands can embrace innovation without losing authenticity, stay agile without sacrificing ethics, and build teams that are ready for what’s next.
Ultimately, AI literacy isn’t about becoming an expert in machines. It’s about staying deeply human in how we work, create, and lead.
This article was co-created with AI, as a conscious exercise in putting AI literacy into practice. By engaging critically and intentionally with the tool, I aimed to reflect the very principles explored here: collaboration, transparency, and human oversight in the age of intelligent technology.
Want to dig deeper into the role of AI in sustainable fashion? Claudia’s full Master Research Project unpacks the ideas explored here with thoughtful analysis and real-world context.
Claudia Gordilho
Located in Toronto, and with a growing focus on academic research and education, Claudia built over 15 years of experience in apparel research, design, development, and production management. Her previous education in Law, combined with her Master in Digital Media, and 2 postgraduate studies in fashion, offers a blend of creativity, technology, and social responsibility, which she aims to apply into supporting the fashion industry's trajectory towards a more sustainable and inclusive future.
References:
Cutean, A., Rice, F., Quan, T., Ratcliffe, J., & Legere, T. (2023). Ontario’s next gen industry: Addressing labour demand and growth in the creative technology sector. Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC). Retrieved from https://ictc-ctic.ca/reports/ontarios-next-gen-industry
Freire, P., & Macedo, D. (2005). Literacy: Reading the word and the world. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203986103
Kohli, J. K. (2024). Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Fashion Education for Future Jobs. Higher Education for the Future, 12(1), 114-128. https://doi.org/10.1177/23476311241284860
Pink Floyd. (1972). Pink Floyd at Pompeii – MCMLXXII: Recording The Dark Side of The Moon – Clip [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoM3UFkuzxo
Stieglitz, S., Zerfass, A., Wloka, M., & Clausen, S. (2024). Communications Trend Radar 2024: Information inflation, AI literacy, workforce shift, content integrity & decoding humans. Academic Society for Management & Communication. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/380534419_Communications_Trend_Radar_2024_Information_inflation_AI_literacy_workforce_shift_content_integrity_decoding_humans
Vasquez, V. (2017). Critical Literacy. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.20
World Economic Forum & PwC. (2024). Leveraging generative AI for job augmentation and workforce productivity: Scenarios, case studies, and a framework for action. World Economic Forum. https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/issues/artificial-intelligence/wef-leveraging-generative-ai-for-job-augmentation-and-workforce-productivity-2024.pdf
