ESMOD: what fashion business education needs to become by 2030

Students starting a fashion business degree next year will graduate in 2030, into an industry that artificial intelligence (AI), sustainability pressures and shifting business models are still reshaping. That leaves schools with a fundamental question: what do you teach when nobody can yet say what half those jobs will be called? FashionUnited put it to programme leaders, teaching professionals and students at international fashion school ESMOD, which recently set up a Fashion & Luxury Skills Observatory to help answer it.

Judgement over tool fluency

AI is becoming less of a tool and more of a collaborator. For Bénédicte Fabien, Fashion Business Programme Director at ESMOD International, that shift fundamentally changes what fashion schools need to teach. It can analyse data, generate content, even contribute to creative and strategic processes. Paradoxically, she argued, those advances make human judgement more valuable rather than less, since tomorrow's best professionals "will not be those who simply know how to use AI tools, but those who know how to ask them the right questions."

The same emphasis on discernment over technical fluency runs through the classroom. Jean-Loup Rebours, Lecturer in Press Relations and Communication at ESMOD Paris/Pantin and founder of Paris PR agency FAXION, said writing skills most often fall short of employer expectations, as graduates increasingly delegate writing to large language models rather than practising it. Emmanuelle Silvestre, Lecturer in International Marketing, Retail and Distribution at ESMOD Lyon, addresses this by structuring assignments around three tiers of AI use, from none to full integration, treating it as a professional tool rather than a substitute for expertise.

That distinction already shapes how students work. Théo Defour, Bachelor Fashion Business student at ESMOD Lyon (2023 to 2026), uses AI to synthesise information while rigorously fact-checking sources, insisting the final creative decision remains his own. For Lolie Cornier, Bachelor Fashion Business student at ESMOD Bordeaux (2023 to 2026), the tool is only as good as the thinking behind it: without vision or sensibility, she said, AI "tends to produce fairly generic results." Both see AI less as a threat to entry-level work than as a filter, freeing them to focus earlier on the judgement calls machines cannot make.

When design and business stop being separate tracks

The traditional divide between creative and commercial roles is steadily disappearing. At ESMOD, Fashion Design and Fashion Business curricula have been converging, but Bénédicte Fabien draws a distinction: the school is not trying to produce individuals who are equally designer, marketer and buyer, but professionals who understand each discipline well enough to make them work in concert. The real risk today, in her words, “is no longer a lack of expertise, but the compartmentalisation of expertise.”

For the next generation, that hybrid mindset is already second nature. Margaux Dufour, Bachelor Fashion Business student at ESMOD Roubaix (2023 to 2026), described herself as creative in her thinking but business-oriented in how she acts, someone who turns ideas into structured, achievable projects. Théo Defour, by contrast, sees himself as a creative at heart who has built the strategic skills to give his ideas reach. Both, Bénédicte Fabien suggested, reflect a generation that has largely stopped thinking in job titles and organises its ambitions around projects and impact.

From module to mindset: sustainability

Rather than treating sustainability as a standalone subject, ESMOD embeds it across every discipline, from product development and sourcing to marketing and strategy. That approach is reinforced by dedicated CSR teaching, Earth Days and Fresque du Climat workshops, and a research partnership with the Chaire Tex & Care at the University of Lille. Bénédicte Fabien’s goal is for sustainability to become a decision-making reflex, on the same level as creativity or economic performance.

Whether the wider industry has reached that point remains open to debate. Jean-Loup Rebours argues that sustainability in fashion is still largely a marketing exercise, given how much clothing already exists. Emmanuelle Silvestre takes a more measured view, pointing to a decade of genuine initiatives alongside persistent greenwashing, some led by small businesses that fold before proving the model works. Either way, she stressed, graduates need to back up any sustainability claim with credible evidence rather than vocabulary alone.

What ‘employable’ will mean in 2030

Around 85 percent of graduates from ESMOD’s Fashion Business programmes secure industry placements, a figure Bénédicte Fabien expects to remain stable even as roles evolve differently by track: product and sourcing will need more strategic and international coordination, communication and image will shift toward differentiated storytelling as AI automates production, and marketing and retail will demand stronger data interpretation kept in service of brand strategy.

The ambitions of today’s students hint at what those careers may become. Visual production or art direction is where Théo Defour hopes to land, with freelancing as a fallback; he sees himself advising young musicians and designers on visual strategy, a role he doubts AI will ever fill. Lolie Cornier still wants to write for a fashion magazine, convinced the need to tell stories and build connections will outlast any job title, whatever form it takes by 2030.

If one idea ran through every conversation, it was this: the competitive advantage of tomorrow’s graduates will not be their command of AI, but their judgement. As Bénédicte Fabien put it, the priority is “the capacity to connect knowledge and exercise discernment.”