The Tech Trends That Will Change Fashion in 2026

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By all indications, 2026 is set to be another year that will see fashion’s continued remaking by technology, especially AI.

It won’t all go smoothly.

Technological progress is often “two steps forward, one step back.” In December, for instance, The Information reported that Salesforce — one of the biggest cheerleaders of businesses rethinking their operations around AI and AI agents — was reducing some of its Agentforce platform’s reliance on large language models. Because these models are inherently probabilistic, you could ask them on five separate occasions to complete the same task and they might come up with five different solutions, with potentially differing results. Salesforce is hoping more standard automation that follows prescribed steps can increase their reliability.

But even if integrating AI into workflows is challenging, competitive businesses will still push ahead trying to find gains with the technology. Fashion companies are seeking ways to increase their efficiency as they face ongoing volatility, choosy consumers and rising costs from factors such as tariffs, which will make their full impact felt this year (if the US Supreme Court doesn’t strike them down). One possible way to do that, while also preparing for the future, is by strategically implementing AI.

But that won’t be the only impact technology has on fashion in 2026. Here are other things the industry will want to watch for in the months to come.

The AI Bubble Talk Continues

Ongoing risk: There was no AI bubble burst in 2025, but concerns remain that it could happen in 2026. In a poll published last month, Deutsche Bank found economists, analysts and investors agreed an AI bubble popping posed the greatest risk to market stability this year.

What it would mean for fashion: The impact would squarely hit US luxury shoppers, whose wealth — and spending on high-end items — tends to track the market. That would create more challenges for luxury, which is trying to shake off a couple years of malaise and has leaned on the US as one of its most resilient regions.

Other concerns: Even if the bubble doesn’t pop, economists worry the boom in tech investment could reignite inflation and prompt central banks to raise interest rates again. One asset manager told Reuters this week, “You need a pin that pricks the bubble and it will probably come through tighter money.”

AI Agents Ramp Up

Power of positive thinking: Agents that can complete multi-step tasks autonomously still have real shortcomings, from struggling to connect with external systems and tools to misunderstanding the best way to do a job, as one Reddit user found when they said Google’s developer agent wiped their hard drive after they asked it to clear their cache.

Still, many tech players are optimistic that agents will improve quickly, setting the stage for growing adoption by both consumers and companies.

Promised rewards: While use of agents for shopping is currently negligible, consumers are increasingly turning to AI platforms for help with their decisions and being nudged by companies to try out agents that handle the most annoying bits of making a purchase, such as completing checkout. ChatGPT already lets you buy directly from Walmart and Target, as well as Shopify and Etsy sellers, directly within its interface, and Amazon has a feature called “Buy for Me” that uses agentic AI to let shoppers buy products from other sites. (Retailers have complained that it’s trying to place orders for products they don’t carry or that are out of stock.)

On the operational side, businesses will start looking to agents to automate rote tasks — and even some more complex ones — as developers work feverishly to make them more dependable.

Building for the future: To that end, expect the tech industry to make progress on the infrastructure to make agents more capable. Right now, there aren’t standard means for agents to communicate with one another or external software. AI developers want to change that with protocols similar to those underlying the World Wide Web. OpenAI introduced its agentic commerce protocol in September, and last month the Linux Foundation, a nonprofit focused on mass innovation through open source technologies, established the Agentic AI Foundation, which provides a “neutral, open foundation” for companies to develop agents collaboratively. It includes Anthropic’s model context protocol, or MCP, which many companies are already treating as the open standard of choice.

It’s unclear how much these steps can solve the reliability problems of agents, but tech companies are expending great effort to make them work.

Backlash to AI Grows

Rage against the machine: Consumers have been railing against companies using generative AI due to concerns over the way AI models were trained on creatives’ work without consent, the impact AI will have on those same creatives’ livelihoods and the technology’s environmental impact — issues which aren’t suddenly going to disappear in 2026. Even as more consumers use LLMs themselves and consume content that, often unbeknownst to them, was made with AI — like the AI songs that have been climbing music charts — they’ll complain when they see companies obviously using AI imagery.

Fever pitch: These tensions will reach new heights as the US holds midterm elections this year and candidates make anti-AI stances part of their campaigns, calling out the threat to jobs, the rising electricity prices data centres are causing for surrounding communities and the kowtowing of big tech players to US president Donald Trump.

Fashion’s dilemma: While there are sure to be some fashion companies that lean into chaotic AI slop or enlist digital artists to create what they frame as elevated AI imagery, others will distance themselves from AI entirely by pledging not to use it in their marketing or stating their commitment to human creativity (which may not be framed as anti-AI but everyone will know what it means). Aerie already started down this road with its promise in October not to use AI-generated bodies or people, while high-end gym chain Equinox just released a campaign using AI images to mock the unreality of AI.

Bonus conundrum: Companies will also face an entirely separate situation that could leave them rethinking their use of AI. In 2026, many will be deciding the fate of AI pilots they launched last year, but integrating AI into existing operations isn’t simple and companies often go about it in the wrong ways, yielding no measurable return on the investments. Those businesses will abandon their AI projects or begrudgingly have to rethink them.

Social Media Under Fire

Bans for kids and teens: While Australia became the first country to ban social media for children and some teens this December, it probably won’t be the last. A number of European countries have publicly discussed similar measures, with France expected to introduce a draft bill this year barring users younger than 15 from social networks.

US court battles: Social-media companies simultaneously face two major lawsuits in US courts this year accusing them of designing their products to be addictive for users, resulting in issues like depression, anxiety and even suicide. The courts have consolidated years of litigation into two proceedings, one in state court and one in federal, with the first to begin in late January in Los Angeles. “This is going to be one of the most impactful litigations of our lifetime,” Joseph VanZandt, the co-lead attorney for plaintiffs in the consolidated state cases, told Bloomberg in October.

More debates to come: Fashion could potentially see a key demographic — teens — shrinking in one of its most important marketing channels. It’s far from clear, however, what effect all of this will ultimately have.

For one thing, it’s an open question whether the penalties are great enough to force tech companies to invest in robust guardrails. Bloomberg technology reporter Alexandra Levine noted this week that platforms deemed not taking “reasonable steps” to keep users under 16 off their platforms in Australia face fines of as much as $33 million, a lot for many companies but not so much for a giant like Meta, which brought in $51.2 billion in revenue in its most recent quarter.

Kids also find ways around these types of online barriers, and none of these events will be the end of debates about the impact social media has on young users and how best to protect them.

What Else to Watch For

There will be plenty more happening at the intersection of tech and fashion. Smart glasses look poised for a breakthrough year, with Google and Warby Parker planning to release their first frames.

AI will keep shaking up fashion’s workforce and jobs like marketing, where it’s being used to create strategies, write copy, generate imagery and determine how and where to place ads.

And just when fashion leaders feel like they’ve got a handle on LLMs, they’re going to have to start understanding the inner workings of world models, neural networks that understand the dynamics of the physical world, which some believe will be the route to systems that can perform any intellectual task a human could do.

Tech Mode will be there to keep you informed along the way.

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