Skip to content
man bot

ISCO 2163 · O*NET 27-1022.00 · codes unverified

Fashion designer

Scores higher than product design, for a reason that has nothing to do with taste and everything to do with hands, cloth and fit.

Where she went next, and the move that made me rewrite this whole essay. Read the essay →

65
Resilience Holding

The shape of the work holds. The admin around it thins out considerably.

0 rebuilding 100 anchored

Scale, labels and thresholds are provisional. This is open question Q-02.

9 of 20 in the launch set

How the score is made

Four declared inputs, never collapsed into one number. Assistance is kept apart from outright automation, because a tool that makes you faster and a tool that replaces you are not the same event. Physical work counts as shelter only to the extent robotics cannot reach it.

The full method is written out, including what it cannot tell you.

Note on this occupation Placeholder values. Real scoring has to handle the ISCO granularity problem described on the product design page.

Assisted
62

Higher is generally good news. It means more of the work gets faster without the work going away.

Done outright
30

This is the number most people mean when they say exposure. It is kept separate from assistance on purpose.

Physical
34

Protective only for as long as robotics cannot reach it. Read this one next to the robotics number, never alone.

Robotics reach
30

Low reach turns physical work into shelter. High reach turns it into the main exposure.

placeholder Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index O*NET 31.0 Gen AI Capacity Study September 2025 detailed data release data 0.1-placeholder

What changes

Tasks moving to machines, in whole or in part.

  • Mood boards, colourways and print variations.
  • Technical packs and specification paperwork.
  • Trend summaries and first-draft range plans.

What stays human

Tasks that need a person, and why.

  • Judging how a fabric will fall before it is cut.
  • Fitting a garment on a real body and knowing what to change.
  • Deciding what a collection is about.

What's new

Work that did not exist in this job ten years ago.

  • Generating and filtering far more options than a studio could ever sample.
  • Made-to-measure production that depends on data, not stock sizes.
  • Provenance and materials claims that have to survive scrutiny.

These three lists are editorial commentary, written against task-level data but not generated from it (OCC-05). Treat them as the author's reading, not as output.

Compare with another job

Pick one. You get a card with both scores, both sets of components, and a link worth sending to someone.

Sources used on this page