{"slug": "what-fashion-tech-leaders-are-reading-this-summer", "title": "What Fashion Tech Leaders Are Reading This Summer", "summary": "Vogue Business compiled a summer reading list from fashion tech leaders, featuring books that explore AI ethics, brand-building, and entrepreneurship. Julie Bornstein recommends Chris Hood's \"Infallible\" on balancing AI with human empathy, while Alexandra Zatarain suggests \"Sneaker Wars\" about the Adidas-Puma rivalry.", "body_md": "If 2025 was the year AI infiltrated every corner of consumer life — from social feeds to shopping — 2026 is the year people are pausing for thought.\n\nDo we want to see [ads within AI chatbots](https://www.vogue.com/article/openai-introduces-ads-in-chatgpt-why-it-matters)? Can AI personal styling apps [actually crack personal taste](https://www.vogue.com/article/can-ai-ever-crack-taste)? Are the brand visuals we see online [real or “AI slop](https://www.vogue.com/article/is-ais-uncanny-valley-fashions-next-playing-field)”? Are social media companies using our personal photos [to train their AI image generators](https://www.vogue.com/story/technology/the-vogue-business-ai-tracker)? Why are tech companies all-in on smart glasses [that can discreetly record our every move](https://www.vogue.com/article/the-next-ai-battleground-your-senses)? Should social media [be banned for younger consumers](https://www.vogue.com/article/in-the-social-ban-era-where-will-gen-alpha-spend-time-online) and held to account for addictive algorithmic design?\n\nAll these questions permeate *Vogue Business*’s conversations with fashion, tech and brand leaders every week, so it seems only natural to ask them what they’re reading to inform their stance. And what are they reading to inspire them for the next phase ahead?\n\nThe *Vogue Business* tech summer reading list is split between books that explore the ethics underpinning AI and other emerging technologies, how tech fits into our broader culture and political powers, how to cultivate a brand that resonates in the age of AI, and books that give practical advice and inspiration for how to think entrepreneurially, live well, and drive change.\n\nIt’s recommended reading as things wind down this summer — and hopefully delivers a timely dose of inspiration to energize you for the fall.\n\n**Julie Bornstein, founder and CEO of Daydream**\n\n*Infallible: The Artificial Intelligence Ideology Reshaping Consumer Behavior* by Chris Hood\n\n*Infallible* is written by the same author, Chris Hood, who created the Customer Transformation framework — he’s deeply focused on how businesses actually evolve around the consumer.\n\nIt’s about the concept that in the rush for faster decisions and pure precision, companies are tempting themselves to prioritize efficiency over actual human empathy. But customers aren’t algorithms; they have emotions, aspirations, and stories that a standard dataset just can’t fully capture.\n\nThe core theme is the paradox of AI: how to balance massive technical innovation with genuine humanity so you don’t erode customer trust. What I love is how he breaks this down structurally. Each chapter pairs a specific AI discipline with a corresponding human intelligence across areas like customer experience and loyalty, using real-life examples.\n\nIn fashion and retail, [taste and intent are incredibly nuanced](https://www.vogue.com/article/can-ai-ever-crack-taste). If you trust an AI’s defaults blindly without the layers of human curation and expertise that we invest in to personalize an experience, you lose the magic that builds real customer trust.\n\nIt’s a grounding read for any leader in the tech or consumer space right now. It looks past all the AI hype and forces you to think about intention. And it’s a reminder that the goal has to remain focused on solving actual human problems and creating a fundamentally better experience for the person on the other side of the screen.\n\n**Alexandra Zatarain, co-founder and VP of brand and marketing at Eight Sleep**\n\n*Sneaker Wars*, by Barbara Smit\n\n*Sneaker Wars* tells the story of the two Dassler brothers, whose family business eventually became Adidas and Puma. It’s a story about sport, rivalry and brand-building, but also about family, ambition, timing and the many decisions that turn a small idea into something much bigger.\n\nWhat I loved most is that it shows how companies that seem inevitable in hindsight rarely feel that way in real time. Today, Adidas and Puma look like iconic global brands with a clear master plan behind them. But the book shows how much of that story was shaped over time — through risks, tensions, personal relationships, leadership changes, competitive pressure and people taking opportunities as they came.\n\nIt was a reminder that great companies are not built in one clean, linear path. I’d recommend it to anyone interested in brands, founders or company-building. It is fascinating that even the most iconic companies start as something much smaller and messier, and that what becomes legacy later is often just a series of difficult choices made in the moment.\n\n**Farrah Storr, head of Substack International**\n\n*The Infinity Machine*, by Sebastian Mallaby\n\nI’ve just finished reading *The Infinity Machine* by Sebastian Mallaby. It’s the story of Demis Hassabis, the man behind Deep Mind. Though he’s arguably not as well known as a Sam Altman or even as Dario Amodei, Hassabis is unquestionably one of the great minds of our time with an incredible backstory. Read this if you want the real story of the development of AI.\n\n#### Instagram content\n\n**Amy Wu Martin, partner at Menlo Ventures**\n\n*The Infinity Machine,* by Sebastian Mallaby\n\nGiven the importance of AI in our world, this book chronicles the history of it, its key players, and explores the origin and motivations of one of the most visionary founders of our time.\n\nThe thing that stayed with me the most is how early the foundations of artificial intelligence were built: in research throughout the early 2000s, accelerated by venture capital in the 2010s, finding commercial viability only in the 2020s. It gave new meaning to me for what “being early” means.\n\nAnd despite Demis’s obsession with solving general artificial intelligence, he was equally obsessed with the safety and ethical guardrails required with the technology. Very prescient given all the AI developments since, and today.\n\n**Will Ahmed, founder and CEO at Whoop**\n\n*Aligned* by Dr. Kristen Holmes\n\nAligned puts language and scientific rigor behind something I’ve seen firsthand for a long time: the best performers aren’t the people who simply push the hardest, but the people who know how to push hard and recover.\n\nDr. Kristen Holmes breaks down the science behind sleep, recovery, stress, circadian rhythm, and daily habits, and turns it into practical actions anyone can take. The result is a better way to think about health and performance — not as something you chase, but something you build every day. It’s about knowing when to push and when to recover. If you get that balance right, you perform better over the long term.\n\nWhat resonated most is the idea of alignment. That means making your daily habits work with your biology instead of against it. The best part is that it doesn’t require anything extreme. Consistent sleep, getting outside in the morning, and building simple recovery habits can have an outsized impact.\n\nI liked this book because it’s practical. Dr. Holmes takes complex science and turns it into simple actions that can make a real difference in how you feel and perform. I also appreciate that the book doesn’t promise shortcuts. It focuses on the small, consistent habits that compound over time, which is ultimately how real performance improvements happen.\n\n**Charlie Smith, chief brand officer at Nothing**\n\n*Empire of AI: Inside the reckless race for total domination*, by Karen Hao\n\nEmpire of AI is a deep dive into the rise of OpenAI, its approach to leading the AI race, and the technology’s wider impact on society.\n\nKaren had impressive access to Sam Altman’s inner circle, which makes the book especially insightful on the company’s motivations, challenges and internal dynamics.\n\nI’m a strong advocate of AI, and I believe it has already become transformative in how we live, work and create. But this book is a stark reminder that we can’t view that progress only through rose-tinted glasses. Karen documents the human and environmental cost behind bringing AI to life. For someone working in tech, and using AI every day, it’s a sobering read.\n\nI imagine many people will read this book and harden their position against AI. For me, the takeaway is different: we should be much more intentional about how we use it. I also think this helps explain why AI has such a bad reputation among younger generations. Too much of the public conversation has been framed around supremacy, the race for AGI, and the idea of replacing people. Not enough has been done to show the genuine everyday value AI can bring: helping people become more creative, more productive and more capable in their work and lives.\n\nI work in the tech sector and probably use AI more than most, so it’s important that I understand it beyond the headlines and product launches. The book does a great job of explaining the human foundations of AI, which are too often left to one side.\n\n**Tony Wang, founder of Office of Applied Strategy**\n\n*There Is No Antimemetics Division*, by Sam Hughes\n\n*There Is No Antimemetics Division* is a sci-fi horror book that explores the spread, or in this case, the containment of ideas through a secret, global organization whose role is to study, capture, and lock away supernatural anomalies. The book follows a specific division focused on containing antimemes — ideas that cannot spread because they literally erase themselves from your memory.\n\nMuch like the new A24 film *Backrooms*, this book takes internet folklore that belongs to no individual IP holder and expands upon it, in this book’s case from the collective lore of SCP. SCP is a massive collaborative writing project and shared universe that evolved out of early internet creepypasta culture.\n\nIt’s a fun, compelling piece of writing that underscores a new, bottom-up mode of cultural production. It feels relevant because in a post-AI economy, cultivating human cognition becomes an increasingly important skill set. Imagination is a distinct form of human intelligence that more of us should be exercising in our daily lives.\n\n**Adele Zeynep Wolton, online safety campaigner and co-founder of The Logging Off Club**\n\n*Users,* by Beeban Kidron\n\nI was lucky enough to attend the launch of Users, and hear from a powerhouse of a woman who is a rare example of a politician who consistently chooses to advocate for our collective interests over that of Silicon Valley.\n\nBe it advocating for the end of CSAM material (Child Sexual Abuse Material) being produced by chatbots, her work leading child safety charity 5Rights, or her activism for creative workers and copyright law in relation to generative Al (which the government pushed back against), this book is an exposé about what goes on in the heart of government and how we can reclaim our agency in the digital age. Beeban speaks plainly, and her no-nonsense approach to taking on Big Tech is what we need at this urgent moment in history.\n\n#### Instagram content\n\nThis book is for everyone, especially lovers of *Careless People* and *Logging Off*!\n\n**Lestat McCree, co-founder and CEO at Healf**\n\n*Meditations*, by Marcus Aurelius\n\n*Meditations* is the original wellness journal (though Aurelius would probably hate that characterization). It’s about discipline, mortality, and the single dividing line that runs through a good life: what you control, and what you must let go.\n\nThe most advanced wellness technology I’ve come across this year isn’t a wearable or a supplement. It’s a habit of attention that predates all of it. We keep engineering the world to capture the mind. Marcus reminds us that reclaiming it is a skill, and always was.\n\nIt’s a poignant reminder that old ideas are the best defence against new noise. There’s never been more noise than now, and the wisest guide to this moment, especially as a tech founder, was written before stirrups or gunpowder were invented.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/what-fashion-tech-leaders-are-reading-this-summer", "canonical_source": "https://www.vogue.com/article/what-fashion-tech-leaders-are-reading-this-summer", "published_at": "2026-07-14 08:30:00+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-14 09:02:24.640226+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-ethics", "ai-products", "ai-startups"], "entities": ["Vogue Business", "Julie Bornstein", "Daydream", "Chris Hood", "Infallible", "Alexandra Zatarain", "Eight Sleep", "Sneaker Wars"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/what-fashion-tech-leaders-are-reading-this-summer", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/what-fashion-tech-leaders-are-reading-this-summer.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/what-fashion-tech-leaders-are-reading-this-summer.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/what-fashion-tech-leaders-are-reading-this-summer.jsonld"}}