Desigual’s Fernanda Blasco on AI: “It’s Not a Threat, But an Ally”

Fernanda Blasco, product manager at Desigual since the beginning of 2025, explains how the company has added Artificial Intelligence tools to develop both its products and marketing strategies. She also reflects on how this addition has affected or may impact the team behind a company in the long term.

Question: How does the synergy between an artificial intelligence tool and a designer work?

Answer: The synergy has to do with the designer, who is always the creative impulse and the generator of the idea. The way we work with AI has to do with a complement to that designer and also the benefit of making those ideas even more driven on a creative level, to be able to have even more ideas. We evaluate AI really as a creative tool and a complement to the designer.

Q: Is it possible, the way the market is evolving, to keep up with all the new things, all the different tools that are coming out all the time? And how easy is it to fall behind?

A: You get left behind if you don’t keep up to date. We talk about AI and ChatGPT as tools that change on a weekly basis. I think it’s part of our job to stay connected. Within Desigual, we talk a lot about being able to select what tools are needed in all that innovation. The part that interests us the most is on a creative level, to be able to benefit, drive and have more and more creativity within the collection.

Q: What do you think the design team of a large fashion company will be like in the future?

A: They are teams that will possibly become more compact, but we think it has to do with a more flexible work in which, as you are interacting at a digital level, you can be both in the offices and working from home. This is a very interesting benefit at a human level, but we also believe that these are teams in which that know-how, that preparation of a member of the design or other parts of the product creation are going to be extremely essential. We are permanently generating a path of change in which the profile will be mutating and changing according to these future needs.

Q: How has Desigual introduced these tools into day-to-day product design?

A: Our day-to-day focus is on agility. We are a fashion company that wants to be very connected to our brand, but we also want to be current and become a competitive company. AI allows us, on the more commercial side and within the product, to analyze sales and know what is working and what is not. On the opposite side, we can generate more creativity, an explosion of ideas that designers can give the right and refined brand input. We believe that the way we are implementing it is right because we see the teams becoming more and more knowledgeable and very excited to be able to have that tool that allows us to generate ideas.

Q: Moving from benefits to risks, what dangers come with the implementation of AI in terms of copyright? What does all this new technology entail?

A: There may be cases when there is precisely no registration of the data. In this case, it is a very important focus in which we maintain this control through information that the AI itself provides, but also with human double-checking. This has to do with both the image, such as product similarities that can happen and also at a marketing level what can be a model or an image of a person. It is something for which we have created different filters in which we can detect, both at a technological level and at a human level, the possible errors and have them very tied up.

“First there is a cycle of friction, when you incorporate the new tool, and then comes the opposite, a system of agility that you can’t live without.“

Q: One of the main tools known for generative AI is ChatGPT, which ends up generating content with the information it has access to through the Internet, which ends up homogenizing the answers it gives to users. Can this also generate, in the design sense, a homogenization among all the companies that start using these tools?

A: Yes. What we convey through the product, especially to our design team, is that this does not happen when those image generation tools are worked in a very refined way, and by that I mean taking into account the information of who we are, of the brand elements, of the DNA of our company or the type of product we use. It can happen, but we are working in the direction of feeding it in the right way so that designers have a much easier time and that the generated product has to do with our house.

Q: So what changes should a fashion company make right now to look to the future of development?

A: What I always use as a word for me is team mindset. I think we come from times of doing a simple hand drawing and now all of a sudden to be talking about AI and GPT Chat, which is a really huge change. What should be done is to think directly through these filters, not to think in 2025 but in 2030, generating compact and very focused teams to be able to absorb that DNA, to be very clear about who is the customer, who is the product and from there, use these tools as a benefit, as a boost of innovative ideas that help our product to be better. You have to think that Artificial Intelligence does not go against you, they add up.

Q: In terms of equipment, is there a supply? Are there enough professionals trained in fashion right now?

A: Yes, these changes have different cycles. In the first one there is more friction, which is when these new tools are incorporated and everyone starts from the previous tool trying to interpret the new one. There is a process that slows down, but then we go completely the opposite, to a system of agility and speed in which not only does it become easy, but there comes a point where you can no longer live without this tool and you are waiting for the next wave of friction to come.

“The designer will not be replaced, but will be required to be constantly trained.“

Q: And where are we at now?

A: We’re at a point of settling in, moving past the friction stage and starting to accept, but we’re not at super-agility yet.

Q: Do you think the dreaded point could come when artificial intelligence replaces the designer?

A: I really don’t think so. But I do think that the designer will be required to train and mutate. We are not going in the direction in which we generate that lack of, but the jobs, the way of thinking, the creation and the fashion productions are going to change, as they also change in other fields at a global level.

Q: And what would you say, then, to these people with the discourse that, in the end, with the implementation and introduction of artificial intelligence, jobs are going to be lost?

A: I would tell them the same thing I tell myself: “I am extremely important to the position I am in,“ and I believe that every member of my team is equally important. You just have to be constantly informed and in a period of training. I think it used to be that you started your career, you trained and automatically jumped to a different phase, which is work. Today, work and training are part of everyday life.

Q: So what companies are looking for when it comes to hiring profiles has changed?

A: Yes, in that requirement of training and of being very updated. Now it is almost mandatory that in a CV this has to be part of the know-how. If not, I think you are left out, because the fields we use to find this talent have changed a lot.

Q: Speaking of the consumer, is he or she ready to understand that perhaps these garments have been designed through artificial intelligence, or should he or she know?

A: It’s a hot topic right now, because we now on the web and on the marketing side are starting to use this tool in a more serious way. We use image editors and really the level of the product looks fantastically good, and we get comments of all kinds, people who congratulate us and others who are completely against it, because they have this sensibility of thinking that if we use AI there is no longer a team behind it. And for us it’s not that philosophy, it’s the opposite, we have our creative teams that are absolutely necessary to create those campaigns and to control the AI. We are not at the moment of acceleration yet, we are just starting to understand and accommodate. These tools still need human understanding to have the final result.