After last week’s announcement that H&M had used AI to generate digital duplicates of its campaign cast, the internet responded with swift and resounding unease. What began as a press release quickly spiraled into something more existential, reflecting a broader wave of anxiety about technology’s accelerating grip on creativity, identity, and labor. Across industries, people began to speculate, critique, and brace themselves not just as professionals but as consumers, wondering what this shift might mean. As the ground beneath culture continues to shift, fashion must decide whether to mirror the moment or move it forward.
There is a tendency, particularly in times of global instability, to treat fashion as either a distraction or a mirror—something we look to either to escape or to understand the moment. But what is often underestimated, even by those inside the industry, is fashion’s enduring relationship with optimism. Not optimism as naivety, but as intention—a forward-looking, generative force that sits at the heart of creativity.
The industry thrives on cycles—seasons, silhouettes, trends—and with each new cycle comes the implicit belief that there is something worth saying, worth making, worth showing. To present a collection is to propose a future. And to propose a future, however stylized or abstracted, is to believe in the possibility of one. This is not just semantics. It’s the foundation of why fashion continues to matter.
Certainly, the past few years have challenged this premise. The pandemic disrupted production, altered the pace of consumption, and forced an entire industry to ask itself uncomfortable questions about purpose, scale, and sustainability. Add to that the political polarization, economic volatility, and environmental anxiety that color so much of daily life, and the temptation to retreat—to reduce risk, to tone down—is understandable.
Optimism in fashion doesn’t always come with sequins and color. Sometimes it’s quieter, more structural. You see it in the rise of independent designers building slow, intentional brands in opposition to the churn of fast fashion. You see it in young creatives choosing upcycled materials not as compromise but as philosophy. You see it in the designers who prioritize inclusion—not as a trend, but as principle—expanding the image of who fashion is for.
Still, optimism can feel like a shrinking currency in an industry increasingly preoccupied with the business of it all. Since the rise of platforms like The Business of Fashion, fashion’s mythology has been steadily replaced with analysis. Once a world shrouded in mystique, it’s now more often broken down into market share and Q4 earnings. The result is an environment where the weaving of dreams must now be balanced with quarterly reports, where creativity is too often filtered through the lens of ROI. Transparency has its merits, but it also risks turning wonder into something clinical.
And then there’s the noise—criticism that’s omnipresent but often unanchored. Online takedowns masquerade as critique, trading depth for speed. Commentary comes less from critics with long-held authority and more from accounts built on anonymity or irony. Some, like Ly.as, manage to strike a rare balance—offering honesty without losing the joy that brought many of us here in the first place. But the trend remains a constant undercurrent of judgment that leaves little room for vulnerability, and even less for risk.
Against this backdrop, optimism becomes not just a feeling, but a choice. A form of resistance. It’s what allows fashion to continue proposing rather than retreating. The garments themselves may be ephemeral, but the act of creating them—of dreaming into the next season, the next shape, the next mood—is inherently optimistic. Clothing doesn’t fix the world, but it reflects how we choose to move through it.
That choice matters. While scrolling through Instagram, I came across a post that read: Be fucking optimistic. It didn’t feel cliché. It felt clarifying. In a time when so much feels unsettled—whether by technology, climate, or politics—hope has become fashion’s quiet advantage.
Optimism, too, is often misread in fashion as frivolity. But it’s worth remembering that some of the most resilient responses to crisis have emerged from this very industry. After the 2008 financial crash, we saw a resurgence of bold color and sharp tailoring. After 9/11, American designers turned inward, refining what it meant to be both elegant and resilient. Even in wartime, fashion has responded—not by retreating into fantasy, but by proposing ways to hold ourselves together, quite literally, through dress.
To be clear, optimism in fashion should not be mistaken for denial. It must coexist with responsibility. Sustainability, equity, transparency—these aren’t optional anymore, and any optimism worth endorsing must include an honest reckoning with those issues. But hope, when paired with accountability, can be a powerful driver. It can motivate the industry to build rather than react. To lead rather than follow.
Ultimately, what sustains fashion is not only its ability to capture the now but to imagine the next. This is where optimism lives—in the sketch, the drape, the runway walk that suggests movement toward something not yet fully realized. In the act of design itself, which says, again and again, that tomorrow might look different. That it might look better.
We need that now. Not as a marketing tactic. Not as a hollow mantra. But as a mindset. Fashion doesn’t have to choose between realism and reverie. It can, and must, hold both. In the process, it may just remind us that optimism is not a detour from reality—but a means of reshaping it.
