AI stole my styling job

As fashion brands replace e-commerce shoots with generated images, one freelancer asks what happens when the industry stops paying for the people who make its fantasies believable.

By Ethan Price

A few days ago, I received an email from a regular client of mine. I am a writer, but have been styling for many years to supplement my income. Being a writer, like seemingly most things that make a person truly happy, rarely pays the rent.

The client in question was an accessible-luxury ready-to-wear brand, one that provides a glimmer of exclusivity to their customers but wouldn’t have a premises on New Bond Street. This, and a few high-end brands that do have shops, reflected the type of clients that have been my bread and butter for many years. Crucially, these are not fast fashion brands. My clients were (rightly) picky when it came to their visual identity. The images created were fussed over, they had to tell a particular story and were re-shot if they weren’t immaculate.

When you work for such clients consistently (for many years, in some cases) you get to know their world intimately, and for the days that you are shooting in their studios, you adhere to and almost believe in the story. You also become part of a team, one consisting of full-time employees and the regular pool of freelancers of which you are a part. Still, in their email, they let me know, in a roundabout way, that my services would no longer be needed because they are moving towards AI-generated images. Even worse, this isn’t a one-off. All of my regular e-commerce clients have sent me very similar emails within weeks of each other. Income: vanished.