The Number Nobody Is Talking About

THE EDIT, ISSUE 6

It’s Tech Week in New York City.

If you’re in fashion and you haven’t heard of it, that’s actually part of what this issue is about. Because the conversation happening across panels and pitch sessions and packed rooms all over the city this week is the same conversation I’ve been watching quietly move into fashion hiring decisions for the past three years. And the people who are paying attention to it right now are going to have a significant advantage over the ones who aren’t.

So let’s talk about it.

I want to start with a number.

Not a vague trend. Not a “the industry is changing” observation that tells you nothing you didn’t already know. An actual number, from actual employer data I’ve been tracking across three academic years.

In 2022 to 2023, the percentage of employers who specifically requested tech skills from early career fashion candidates was zero. Not low. Zero.

The following year it crept to 1%. This past year it jumped to 18%.

One year. One percent to EIGHTEEN. And based on everything I’m seeing from employers right now, that number is nowhere near done climbing.

I’ve said this number out loud in rooms full of people who make hiring decisions for a living and watched them nod slowly because they already know it’s true. They’re living it.

The question is whether you know it yet. And more importantly, whether you’re doing anything about it.

Because here’s what that number actually means: tech fluency in fashion is no longer a bonus. It’s becoming the baseline. And the candidates who understand that right now, before it becomes obvious to everyone, are going to have an enormous advantage over the next two to three years.

This isn’t about becoming a tech person. I want to be very clear about that because I think it’s the thing that makes most people in fashion immediately check out of this conversation.

You don’t have to be a developer. You don’t have to understand code. I know because I taught myself to build websites through an embarrassing number of YouTube videos at odd hours of the night, and what it gave me wasn’t just a technical skill set. It was the confidence of never being held hostage by something I didn’t understand.

That’s what tech fluency actually gives you. And right now, in this market, during a week when the most important rooms in fashion tech are full of people making decisions about where this industry is going, you need to know what that looks like on the ground.

According to NACE’s Spring 2026 Job Outlook Report, demand for AI skills among entry level candidates more than doubled in just six months. Separately, 57.8% of employers are already assigning interns projects that require AI tools and skills.

More than half. Right now. This summer.

Which means if you’re walking into an internship this season, there’s a strong chance someone is going to hand you something AI-related and expect you to know what to do with it.

One of the flagship panels at NY Tech Week this year was titled “Beyond the Headlines: Why Getting AI Right for Fashion Is Harder Than It Looks.” That title is doing a lot of work. Because most of what early career candidates are hearing about AI is either fear, it’s coming for your job, or hype, use it for everything.

Neither of those is useful or true.

Here’s what is true: according to the NACE report, 52.2% of employers say AI has not reduced the need for entry level work at all. Zero percent say it has completely eliminated it. And only 11% of companies are even having conversations about eliminating positions because of it. The fear is significantly outpacing the reality.

But here’s the part that should actually get your attention.

The stakes go beyond getting hired. According to the State of Fashion 2026 report by Business of Fashion and McKinsey, more than half of US consumers using generative AI for search are already using it to shop, and 41% now trust those AI results more than paid advertising.

Let that sink in for a second.

AI isn’t just changing how you get a job in fashion. It’s changing how fashion reaches its customers entirely. Every function, buying, marketing, design, production, is going to feel that shift.

The brands that figure this out are going to need people who already understand it. The candidates who understand it now are the ones who will be most valuable when those decisions get made.

Which brings me to a question I’ve been genuinely curious about:

I'll be sharing the results in a future issue because I think the answer is going to be very telling about where most early career candidates actually are with this right now.

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