The combination of physical and digital elements has been transforming the way people shop for their clothing, allowing shoppers access to unique products and gaining an enhanced in-store experience through technology.

Fashion brands worldwide have taken note of this trend, eager to capitalize on its potential benefits, but what exactly is phygital fashion? Read on to learn more about what it means and why it’s important for brands today!

What is phygital fashion?

Phygital fashion refers to the fusion of physical and digital elements in the fashion industry. This can take many forms, such as using virtual or augmented reality technology in fashion shows and retail experiences, integrating wearable technology into clothing and accessories, and blurring lines between online and offline fashion consumption. 

Phygital fashion represents a shift towards a more immersive and interactive approach to fashion, breaking down traditional boundaries and allowing for new possibilities in how we engage with fashion. It is an exciting development shaping the industry’s future and changing how we think about fashion and technology.

The meaning of Phygital is quite simple to understand. The word “phygital” is simply a compound of the words (phy)sical and di(gital). It originates from the Web3 community, which believes in the evolution of the internet as we know it today into a decentralized and even more interactive and usable tool. 

But even in the scene, the word is a rather controversial one. The term phygital didn’t originate in the fashion industry and is not only related to it. It just describes the fusion of the physical and digital worlds. Concerning our topic: Merging physical and digital worlds of fashion.

How do you merge the physical and digital worlds of fashion?

Phygital fashion is all about blending the physical and digital worlds of fashion. But how do you merge these worlds, and why should you even bother? The truth is, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer. Just like the term “phygital” itself is not yet widely recognized, there is no specific formula for creating phygital fashion. 

The key is to find ways to incorporate elements of the digital world into physical fashion items or vice versa. Many tools are available to help you achieve this, and it’s up to you to decide which ones to use and how to use them. In the following sections, we’ll explore some of these technologies and showcase how major fashion brands are already utilizing them.

If you want to dive deeper into the topic, the Phygital Design Agency is an agency whose website gives you a good overview of the different tools.

Tool 1: AR filters

We assume that AR filters are nothing new to you. You’ve probably used them many times to send funny pictures of yourself to your friends and family. You can use it on various social media platforms such as Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok. 

And guess what? The fashion industry has also discovered AR Filters for itself. Fashion companies like Gucci have already designed AR filters in which you can wear shoes digitally. 

Amazon also recently entered into an exclusive partnership with Snapchat to virtually try on sunglasses offered on Amazon. 

It will be a while before the technology works as a virtual try-on for all kinds of clothing, but should we tell you a secret? The fashion companies already working with AR filters do so mainly because those filters offer a huge organic reach and are a great way to let the community interact with the label.

Tool 2: NFC chips

We like to lean far out the window and describe NFC chips as the most thought-after technology to create phygital fashion. First, a small description of NFC (Near-Field Communication) chips: You certainly know NFC chips from contactless payment with your bank card in the supermarket and hotel key cards. In short, these are chips on which stored data can be read out with a terminal device such as a smartphone. 

Now you are probably wondering how NFC chips should be used in fashion. Quite simply, you can store any kind of data on these chips, and they can be sewn onto your clothes in the form of clothing tags. The chips can serve as a certificate of authenticity for clothing, be used to communicate with the garment owner, or simply contain information about the garment. One of the most famous projects using NFC chips is a hoodie from a Nike x RTFKT collaboration.

Tool 3: Metaverse Wearables

You’re probably thinking, “Oh no, that eternal Metaverse topic again. I already get enough ads about it on my social media.” And we must admit, we are seeing more and more ads of this type too.

Maybe that’s why more (in particular) high fashion brands are collaborating with Metaverse projects. A number of collaborations have been announced in the last few months: from Burberry x Minecraft to Ralph Lauren x Fortnite. 

Various virtual worlds, so-called metaverses, are clearly in vogue among fashion brands and will remain so, according to the Roblox 2022 Metaverse Fashion Trends Report. The reasons for this are obvious: young people like to present themselves in their digital selves, and fashion labels use this to tap into new markets.

Wrapping up

It’s hard to predict the future of fashion, but it’s safe to say that digitization plays a big role in its evolution. As more and more labels embrace this new technology, we expect to see even bigger changes in how we shop for and consume fashion. We’re already seeing brands experimenting with innovative ways to merge the physical and digital worlds, and it’s exciting to think about all the possibilities yet to be explored. 

There are already quite a few signs of this, and agencies such as the Phygital Design Agency are making a major contribution to training traditional fashion companies in the specialist field of phygital fashion.

Companies may benefit from fashion forecasting services by staying on top of current trends and gaining a more significant part of the market. By having an expert predict what’s happening in the fashion world, you’ll know exactly how to plan your marketing campaigns and production capacities.

We’ve made this blog post so that you don’t have to spend hours searching and trying to find all this information by yourself. Here we list 11 services that are doing great work out there helping businesses or individuals like you succeed!

Heuritech

Heuritech is the only technological solution that analyzes the fine characteristics of social media photographs to understand your product, consumers, and market fully.

A cutting-edge fashion technology firm, Heuritech, gives businesses predictive data on trends and goods. AI-powered Heuritech helps fashion firms estimate demand and trends more precisely, create more sustainability and gain a unique competitive advantage by translating real-world photographs posted on social media into relevant information.

RELATED ARTICLE: How Long Do Fashion Trends Last? Distinguish Between Fads, Trends And Classics

PhDs formed the firm in 2013 with one purpose: to bridge the gap between artificial intelligence and business, two sectors typically separated. Heuritech is still applying the most recent scientific findings to the fashion business many years later.

Predictive analytics on growth, volume, adoption speed, etc., may be used to accurately measure demand and trends by studying what’s occurring on social media. By anticipating upcoming trends rather than merely responding, fashion manufacturers can create the amount required for each region and audience, lowering their excess.

WGSN

To date, WGSN has accurately predicted trends for the most valuable brands in the world for more than two decades. Since its founding in 1998, WGSN has been a driving force in the fashion industry by predicting the future and disrupting the market with its groundbreaking online trend service.

They continually keep an eye out for changes in customer attitudes, feelings, and behaviors. To help companies remain relevant and ensure their future, their specialists connect the connections to precisely forecast what consumers will need in the years to come.

Insights from reputable sources, including up-to-the-minute trend updates and 10-year-out projections, help you make educated choices. Everywhere in the globe, WGSN helps creative thinkers understand and create for the next-generation customer.

Trendzoom

Subscribers to the Trendzoom service get very precise trend forecasts. Four categories of reports are available to the service: Colour, Concept, Fashion, and Design. With the trendPX portfolio, Trendzoom also supplies street style inspiration and offers business consultations.

The Fashion forecasting reports capture emerging trends from catwalk and street style photographs in highly graphic and engaging pieces. In the form of mood boards, they transform the season’s main themes into practical design concepts. Analysis of catwalk and street style photographs is used to identify fresh design concepts for clothing and accessories.

They cover three main topics in the reports: womenswear, male fashion, and youth fashion. Each line and proportions, fabric textures and patterns, surface patterns, and essential elements are revealed in each category to guarantee that the new design continues to be current and collectible.

Trendstop

Fashion and lifestyle trends are Trendstop’s specialty, but they’re more than just a forecasting firm. The experts at Trendstop are here to help you make informed decisions about the future so that you don’t waste your time and money on products that don’t sell.

A sustainable and lucrative fashion and leisure sector is the goal at Trendstop. Since 2002, they’ve been utilizing their proven trend forecasting technique and market information to keep you ahead of the curve when it comes to customer demand. It’s easier to spend your money on products that you know others will desire.

Don’t waste your time guessing. Do some research about what mainstream customers will want to wear 12 months from now, and follow their progress. As a result, you may confidently plan new goods for future seasons.

You may get a taste of Trendstop trend reports for free.

TOBE TDG

Regarding consumer culture, TOBE TDG is a go-to source for expert advice and cutting-edge creative solutions. TOBE and The Doneger Group, founded in 1927 and 1946, respectively, have evolved for today’s financial world.

TOBE TDG is a special operations team that provides strategic advice on branding, positioning, consumer interaction, merchandising and curation, design direction, and marketing message for outstanding organizations. It has one of the most forward-thinking and effective content platforms, thanks to its extensive market research.

TDG has developed a new model for predicting significant transformations in the sociocultural and creative landscapes two to five years before they occur.

When working with fashion, beauty, entertainment, food & beverage, hospitality, real estate, and lifestyle industries, TOBE TDG brings a new perspective, a critical eye, and a keen analytical mind to every project. T

DG has a long history of retail and trend forecasting and is an industry powerhouse for complete merchandising guidance, taking into account everything from branded resources to private label and proprietary lines and collaborations and partnerships.

It’s a dream come true to have a group of brilliant people who can think critically and creatively on a wide range of subjects, from new ventures to hot-button issues in the corporate world.

Fashion Snoops

The fashion and other consumer-facing sectors’ companies, retailers, and manufacturers are empowered to act on future trends via Fashionsnoops’ services. They take a broad view, start early, and keep an eye on the trends that will affect customer behavior.

They can inform product development from inception to completion by explicitly stating why a trend is significant. By providing you with complete access to their decision-making process, Fashionsnoops offers transparency to trend forecasting.

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In today’s hyper-connected world, today’s creatives are asking for more than open-ended possibilities to cope. An editor’s remarks and industry experts’ thoughts offer a complement to their stories.

Patternbank

Through their True Trend Validation, Patternbank continually tests and monitors the relevance of their central forecasts and themes and tracks the growth profile of emerging trends, reclassifying them as significant themes and increasing coverage as they gain traction enabling you to gain first-to-market advantage within your category.

Patternbank was established by industry experts dedicated to empowering designers and simplifying the pattern purchase process.

As of 2012, they’ve been bringing together fashion, home, stationery, and gift-buying clients from all around the world. The B2B marketplace provides a simplified solution where clients can find curated designs, get trend inspiration to drive their purchasing choices, and purchase and download digital files instantaneously.

Patternbank is committed to providing your company with directional and commercially relevant designs and patterns. They know that staying on top of the newest and upcoming trends is critical when it comes to picking the appropriate appearance for your product.

For these directional and economically significant print and pattern trend topics, their trends team looks at a wide variety of sectors. Analyses have been conducted on various issues, including works of art, films, fashion, music, and pop culture. They are aware of the fast-paced nature of the design profession, and their goal is to help you and your team stay on top of the latest trends.

Trendcouncil

Trendcouncil has compiled a collection of the season’s most important trend stories using mood boards, primary color palettes, materials, and other inspiration. For each subject, there are also vector flat drawings and original art files. Intimate, active, and swimming assessments are available for all genders and ages.

Each season, they assist in the deciphering of tens of thousands of runway cues. Their seasonal forecasting provides you with a tool and insight for your seasonal development by presenting the most basic patterns of each season.

Every season, the editors go through the collections to find the standouts, essential pieces, knitwear, denim, print, embellishments, and materials that will influence your future design decisions and purchases.

To help you plan your long-term design initiatives, they’ve created the TRENDVOYANT area of their site to synthesize the most recent worldwide societal, cultural, and lifestyle trends so that you can better inform your company strategy.

F-trend

When it comes to maximizing sales and return on investment, you need F-trend trends’ solutions and services to make sure you have the right product in the right location at the right time. Using their foresight, they can help you save time and money, improve the accuracy of essential product choices, and boost your profit margins all at the same time.

Designers, brands, and retailers may benefit from F-fashion trend’s trend intelligence by making smarter decisions from idea to production, increasing profitability, and boosting revenue growth.

Eclectic trends

Eclectic Trends is dedicated to observing and interpreting trends. They help you recognize trends, make them your own, and turn them into new ideas for your business and consumers.

In each report, you’ll find a wide variety of initiatives and ideas for further research. Your self-esteem will soar, and you’ll be able to begin implementing new ideas.

ModaCable

Modacable.com is a close-season and long-distance fashion trend forecaster. If you’re looking for a fashion archive, you may also find one here. Follow up on fashion shows and critical shapes for the forthcoming season regarding accessories and footwear, children’s clothing and denim, and men’s wear trends and colors.

Software for 3D clothing design exists to assist you in creating a more sustainable fashion business by eliminating wasteful practices and carbon emissions. Using a cutting-edge software solution will save you time, money, and resources while also assisting you in doing good for the environment.

You’ll be able to save money on sample costs while still producing high-quality designs. The majority of today’s 3D design platforms make it simple to share your creations with others and work with your team in a collaborative environment.

This article shares a list of the best 3D clothing design software and what makes each unique.

CLO and Marvelous Designer

Website

Platform: Windows and Mac

CLO and Marvelous Designer are two distinct programs created by the same company. They’re so similar that it’s worth discussing them together. However, there are some important distinctions to be aware of, which we shall discuss in this section.

The robust simulation engines of CLO and Marvelous Designer enable you to develop designs with endless layers and complex features. Create a variety of outfits, ranging from a basic shirt to technical outerwear with intricate pattern pieces and construction. 

The programs aren’t just for designing clothes. You can make anything out of fabric, such as hats, purses, wallets, lingerie, swimwear, and more. Both CLO and Marvelous Designer can precisely simulate drape-sensitive textiles such as lightweight wovens and jerseys with various material characteristics.

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With only a few clicks, you can see your creations come to life! Users of any skill level or specialization may immediately become acquainted with the straightforward and user-friendly interface of the software.

One advantage of CLO and Marvelous Designer is that they are cross-platform, which means you can use them on either a PC or a Mac.

CLO and Marvelous Designer remain some of the least costly alternatives for individual designers. You may obtain a CLO license for $50 per month. Meanwhile, Marvelous Designer’s personal license is $39 per month. They also provide student discounts and different pricing for organizations that require several licenses.

The differences between CLO and Marvelous Designer

CLO and Marvelous Designer are intended for use in the fashion and entertainment sectors, respectively. 

Marvelous Designer has CG-friendly tools like a UV editor, Sculpt mode, and Remeshing that CLO does not have. On the other hand, CLO allows you to change the size of your avatar and supports DXF-AAMA (drawing) files.

Marvelous Designer may be used for several purposes in the realm of 3D garment creation. It is especially effective in circumstances when the attention to detail and quality of the garment are critical. The more complicated the design, the more time Marvelous Designer can save you.

The goal of Marvelous Designer is to maintain everything digital or online. You can use the software in conjunction with 3D programs such as 3ds Max, Maya, Pose, and DAZ Studio.

CLO caters to fashion designers by allowing them to export their designs into the real world. If you need to export your digital garments and send them to manufacturing, you may do so with CLO. It essentially tackles the problem of quickly producing mockups rather than physically creating them, which is costly and time-consuming.

The interactive render is one of CLO’s best features. It is an excellent tool if you’re a fashion designer who doesn’t have any other 3D applications or 3D external renderers, but you need to present your clothes interactively.

To summarize, CLO is intended for fashion designers who want to make their garments in real life. Meanwhile, Marvelous Designer is for 3D artists who want to keep their designs in the digital space.

Browzwear

Website

Platform: Windows and Mac

With a comprehensive portfolio of easy-to-use tools, Browzwear delivers the power of 3D to fashion design, development, marketing, and collaboration.

Browzwear is a pioneer of 3D fashion software. It includes modules like Vstitcher, Lotta, Stylezone, and Fabric Analyzer for designing, fitting, retailing, and displaying the product. Each module promotes collaboration and reduces the number of designs and SKUs that are sampled but never used.

Browzwear is also cross-platform, meaning it works on both Windows and Mac computers. One of the few drawbacks of Browzwear is that it is mainly offered to corporate employees. However, they also have an Indie Program for individual designers.

Let’s review the most important modules of Browzwear.

Vstitcher

VStitcher is one of the top 3D fashion design software in the industry. Designs may be created using size ranges, graphics, fabrics, trimmings, colors, and photorealistic 3D rendering. Designers, technical professionals, and pattern makers may build designs and enhance them with features like the true-motion fit, pattern modification, grading, and tech packs.

Its 3D rendering feature lets you see your changes in real-time or produce a photorealistic 3D picture of your garments for the most exact material simulation.

Lotta 

Lotta is a patternless styling tool that makes it simple to develop new designs with an unlimited choice of design lines, graphics, materials, trimmings, colors, and more. 

You can build new styles using validated blocks and transform patterns, logos, and other items from 2D to 3D with ease. Even if you are new to 3D, Lotta makes it simple!

Assume your team does styling rather than product development or pattern making. With Lotta, they may rapidly change colors, materials, and artwork and use pre-defined shapes without cutting or sewing digitally.

Stylezone

Stylezone is a unique web and mobile collaboration tool that allows all stakeholders to engage at every level of the process, from design to merchandising.

Stylezone is a cloud-based platform for exhibiting and exchanging 3D prototypes. Stylezone, the merchandising arm of Browzwear’s entire digital workflow system, allows you to rotate, zoom, move, and interact with 3D clothing from design through merchandising. 

Fabric Analyzer

The Fabric Analyzer is a sophisticated device that allows users to assess all of a fabric’s physical qualities, from thickness to stretch and bend. The gathered data is subsequently converted into a visual picture in seconds. Data is immediately imported into VStitcher or other 3D software.

Optitex

Website

Platform: Windows

Optitex offers a holistic approach to fashion design that can allow you to set new standards for time-to-market, on-demand manufacturing, cost efficiency, and automation on a global scale. 

Like Browzwear, Optitex has a series of workflows, or modules, which we will explore next. The central piece is their 2D/3D Pattern Design Software, but other exciting tools are worth mentioning. You can find here a complete list of all Optitex products.

2D/3D Pattern Design Software

Optitex’s cutting-edge Pattern Design Software helps you to create faster and deliver better goods for your customers. It combines robust 2D design with realistic 3D visualization in a single platform to meet the demands of both the clothing and technical textile sectors.

The elegant user interface is fully configurable, and the workstation maximizes your design space.

Optitex 2D drives your pattern and clothing design process. You can create, reposition, and open darts and pleats, including multi-pleats, in seconds.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could easily convert your base or sample patterns into various sizes? You can do that with Optitex 2D Pattern Grading. It allows you to generate several sizes for a single clothing design quickly.

Optitex 2D’s Tech Pack Essentials helps you quickly create customized documents and view model data. Imagine no more long, error-prone operations and all your model data front and center, including design, pattern pieces, grading, stitching, and more.

Also, making markers with Optitex 2D is quicker and smarter. Creating a marker file, nesting it, and outputting a costing report with all marker data takes a few minutes. The Module Auto Nesting tools are designed to satisfy your marker-making demands from cost to productivity.

But, as mentioned before, Optitex software is not just limited to 2D. You can also create and share Photo Realistic 360° pictures of a realistic 3D virtual sample with customizable lighting and shadows. Using a tension map, you can see the exact tension, distance, and stretch between the fabric and the avatar.

Creative

The Creative module enables you to design directly in 3D to express your creative ideas. That is, you will be able to modify your style without ever touching the pattern.

For a quick onboarding process, Creative provides an essential user experience that fits designers’ skill sets. 

With faster design and decision-making tools, you can free up time to be even more creative. Use the same 3D assets between the design and technical teams to communicate efficiently.

3D design for Illustrator

With the cutting-edge 3D plug-in developed by Optitex, you can see fabric and colors, change print patterns, and adjust graphic positioning in Adobe Illustrator.

Suppose you’re used to utilizing Illustrator as part of your design process. In that case, this plug-in will help you produce beautiful clothing with intricate prints by allowing you to leverage Illustrator’s fine-tuning capabilities.

Tuka3D

Website

Platform: Windows

Tukatech provides an end-to-end solution for any clothing business. They offer several products ranging from 3D body scanning, laser cutting, and design tools. For this article, we will focus specifically on their 3D design solution, TUKA3D.

With TUKA3D, you can create spectacular presentations to show off 3D digital collections that replace physical samples. 

You may also host fit sessions on customized virtual avatars that simulate real-time motion, guaranteeing perfect garment fit. Frame by frame, you can rotate the avatar to assess the garment’s tightness and looseness and evaluate its comfort in 5 visual ways: stretch, warp, weft, pressure, and x-ray.

TUKA3D has a constantly updated fabric and trim library as well as access to the Pantone color library. Users may also connect to graphic design tools like Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator to build design layouts for 3D virtual samples.

In short, TUKA3D has it all! Showcase your design in a presentation on TUKAcloud or your website.

This blog post will guide you through how to plan using outfit planning apps and organizational tools that allow for a more streamlined process from start to finish.

The apps are listed in no particular order. If you wish to jump directly to one of them, you can use the following table.

Smart Closet

Pricing: $3.99 – offers in-app purchases.

Download: iOS, Android

As soon as you open the app, you get delighted by its simple and sleek design. As well as the other apps in this list, you should start by adding your items to create your closet. 

To add an item, you have several options like choosing an existing picture or taking a new one, as well as searching from their shop or the web. In my case, I went for choosing an existing photo.

It’s possible to make edits to the picture after uploading it, which is a great idea. However, the background remover did not work very well for me; in this case, it’s better to remove it using another application.

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Then, you can create looks from your items in the lookbook tab; this has several options too: 

• You can create a collage, which is super fun and a nice feature to see your outfit.
• You can also create by rule, for example, “tops + jeans,” and the app will generate all possible looks based on your closet.
• You can also search from the web.

The app also has a calendar and a packing section, which are helpful if used in combination. The last one will create your packing list. The calendar acts as a reminder to select your outfit once you’re on the travel. You can find those options by going to your profile in the more tab.

Another exciting thing about Smart Closet is that you can see many statistics about your clothes in your profile, such as your item count, favorite colors, favorite brands, and most worn looks, simultaneously.

If you want an in-depth Smart Closet tutorial, check out the one we created!

Stylebook

Pricing: $3.99

Download: iOS

When you open the app, you’ll be welcomed with some handy instructions on using the app, which I liked.

Stylebook can sync between devices using iCloud backup so that you can have all your items and outfits both on your phone and tablet, for example. 

The first thing is to create your closet. When you go to the closet tab, you’ll see that categories are empty, and you need to fill them up with your clothes and accessories. You can edit the categories if you want.

There are also some pre-uploaded examples so you can play around with the app features without uploading any pictures.

When you upload a picture, you can edit it to remove the background; however, I found it challenging to remove it altogether, so I helped the app by removing the background previous to uploading my items. 

Then, if you go to your looks tab, you will also see categories like Day, Work, Formal, Vacations, etc. You can edit these categories to what works for you. You can create new looks by adding them to any of the classes.

When you create a new look, you can select the items from your closet and move them around like a collage style. Another cool feature of the looks is the Outfit Shuffle: You can choose 2-8 categories, and the algorithm will randomly mix items for new outfit ideas!

It’s worth mentioning that you can mix your items with inspiration that you take from blogs or social media and add it to your looks. 

Stylebook also has a calendar feature to add looks or items on specific days and notify them. You can also create trips and packing lists, as well as see stats on your style!

If you would like to know how to plan your outfits using Stylebook, make sure to check out our article for an in-depth tutorial!

Cladwell

Pricing: Subscription-based – Consult the pricing here

Download: iOS, Android

You start by setting your goal, so the Cladwell algorithm can adapt to your needs and provide you with the most valuable insights. For example, I selected “find my style” as my goal. Other goals include but are not limited to declutter your wardrobe or buy better.

The next step is to select your 15 favorite items from your closet to create your first capsule. You can choose from the sample items or add a custom one from a picture. The background remover works fantastic, and selecting the characteristics of the piece is super easy. You can create more capsules as needed based on your activities.

The app will recommend ensembles every day for the outfits based on the selected capsule and the weather. If you like what you see, you can click on select this outfit, and it will be logged for the day; otherwise, dismiss it never to see it again. You can tap the heart to add it to your favorites.

You can also plan outfits for different days if you have something in mind for an occasion. 

The app also allows you to create shopping wishlists and see your analytics.

Overall, Cladwell is one of the most complete and functional outfit planning and closet analytics that exists. The design is delightful, and it works smoothly. 

If you would like to know more about Cladwell, you can check out our full tutorial!

Pureple

Pricing: Free – offers in-app purchases.

Download: iOS, Android

When you go to Pureple for the first time, it will ask you a couple of questions like your gender and age group; then, it will prompt you to select pieces that you have in your wardrobe.

Pureple is slightly different from the other apps because they have several examples of clothes that you can just select without taking pictures and uploading the items yourself; this is useful if you don’t want to spend time uploading your actual garments, but you can upload your own as well if you want to.

After you select a few items, Pureple will create your wardrobe. You can add more items later. Then, you can start building outfits. Here you have two options: Style Me to get outfit suggestions or Create to create an outfit from your items manually. If you create an outfit manually, you can create a collage style by moving the things around as you wish. 

Using the Style Me feature, you can let the algorithm surprise you or give it an item to style or style based on weather conditions or occasion.

Another cool thing is that you can ask the community to style your outfit so that other people can help you!

Once your outfit is created, you can tag it by occasion, weather, etc., and add it to a date to move it to the calendar. You can find the calendar and packing list in your profile section.

If you would like to give Pureple a try, please check out our in-depth review to know how to make the most out of it.

Save Your Wardrobe

Pricing: Free

Download: iOS, Android

Save your wardrobe has a very sleek design, and it’s highly focused on sustainability. Every time you add an item, you unlock your sustainability record.

You should start by adding your items to the wardrobe tab. You can take a picture or upload an existing one. Once you upload the photo, you will have the option to remove the background; this feature worked well for me!

Then, you’ll be prompted to fill in some details about the clothing or accessory, such as the name, brand, color group, and category; this is important, so later on, you can filter your closet based on all these characteristics.

In your today section, you can see the breakdown of your wardrobe, which is super interesting. The app will show you pie charts of your most used colors, brands, etc. You can also see your outfit for the day and exciting blog posts on sustainability, wardrobe tips, mindful living, etc. 

You can also plan outfits on this app; you just need to go to the outfits section on the bottom right and select the items from your wardrobe. What I like the most is that you can save them to a list, which is super helpful for traveling, for example. You can also select a date to wear that outfit, and the app will remind you of it.

A downside of the outfits section, in my opinion, is that you cannot see the entire outfit in a collage style; the outfit is instead a list of the items that constitute it.

This app’s main differentiator is a services section to book repairs, cleaning, or donations, which you can see in the services tab.

XZ closet

Pricing: Free

Download: iOS, Android

When you start with XZ closet, you answer a fun questionnaire where they present you with clothes, and you need to select if you have them in your wardrobe. This process makes it very quick and easy to create your wardrobe. Of course, it’s not exactly like yours, but it can give you an estimation. 

If you want to add your items, you can tap on the plus sign at the bottom of the app. Then you can select from a website, from similar things, or your existing photos. 

I selected my existing photos. I have to say this is one of the most advanced apps in the automatic recognition of the item. It correctly detected the category, the color, and even the pattern! 

But what I liked the most is that it automatically removes the background from your picture and does it exceptionally well; this is time-saving, so you don’t have to do it manually with another application.

Once you’re done creating your wardrobe, the forecast page will show you suggestions of outfits based on your location and the current weather there. 

You’ll see the calendar in the next tab, where you can add outfits by tapping into a date.

Combyne

Pricing: Free

Download: iOS, Android

Combyne has an energetic design, and it works more as a social media app. As soon as I signed up, I was prompted to follow some creators to build a social presence. 

Then, the next thing to do is to create an outfit; here, there are two options: the Swipe Combiner, which allows you to match items by swiping, or a Canvas Combiner, where you can design freely, like a collage. 

The creation features of Combyne are pretty advanced. It’s a platform where you can leave your inner stylist free and use all your creativity to create outfits.

There are thousands of items that you can add to your outfit; you can move them around, make them bigger or smaller, and even add a background. After that, you can share it with the community or simply save it to a collection of your own.

Combyne is an app for creating beautiful lookbooks and sharing them, like an Instagram for stylists! Of course, this can also help you plan your outfits or your shopping list.

LookScope

Pricing: Free

Download: iOS

LookScope is a very minimalistic app that has all you need to create outfits. When you first log in, it will let you start by adding sample items to your wardrobe. Select a few to get started. 

Then, to create an outfit, you can click on the plus sign at the bottom of the screen; this will select a few random items; then, you can swipe to change the pieces you wish to and lock the ones you like by pinning them. Once you’re happy with an outfit, just star it. 

You can upload your clothing by uploading a photo. The app has a simple but effective editor to add some filters and remove the background from the picture.

That’s it; LookScope is uncomplicated.

GetWardrobe

Pricing: Free – offers in-app purchases.

Download: iOS, Android

GetWardrobe has a friendly interface and also social features to share your outfits with a community.

Adding a new item or outfit is very easy; you just need to click on the plus sign at the bottom of the screen. The only option to add items is from your existing photos. Once you select a picture or upload it, an editor will come up, and here you can crop the image and remove the background. The background remover works very well!

The app has some premium features for which you need a subscription to use them. One of the features is the packing list, so if you need to plan for a trip, consider that you might need to subscribe.

Closetspace

Pricing: Free

Download: iOS, Android

Closetspace has several other features apart from outfit planning. You can directly shop inside the app, find inspiration from influencers, create wishlists and, of course, organize your wardrobe. For this article, I’ll focus on the outfit planning aspects of the app because this is why you’re here. 

Start by adding your items by going to my Items tab. The process is fast if you already have all the pictures of your items since you can upload up to five photos simultaneously. The only downside is that you cannot remove the background of the images, which can be a bit distracting or not look so good when putting together the outfits. 

Once you complete your wardrobe, your items will be classified into their main categories. You can create outfits from the items in your closet by going to my Outfits tab and then tag them for weather, temperature, and occasion. So when you have a few outfits created, you can filter by those characteristics.

There’s also a calendar feature in which you can add outfits to certain days. It’s handy for special occasions or travels! Just go to my Calendar and add outfits to the days you prefer. 

Final thoughts

I’m always on the lookout for ways to streamline my life and make it easier. Apps that help me plan out outfits in advance are a lifesaver! They can give you insights into your wardrobe, create shopping wishlists, and even show you how to plan when traveling or looking for inspiration based on different themes. 

If you want to know more about using technology in your favor, make sure to read our article about second-hand shopping apps.

You may have found yourself in the following situation in the past: You have an event or holiday coming up, and you want to look your best; you have a lot of inspiration from social media, yet you don’t know where to buy those fantastic clothing items. In that case, trying one of these apps or websites might be a game-changer.

These tools use AI-powered image recognition technology to identify styles, patterns, colors, and other product characteristics to find exact matches or similar products in different price ranges. The intuitive algorithm helps you get style inspiration from the latest trends without breaking your budget!

In this article, we will explain why we love these tools and how you can use them.

Amazon StyleSnap

Why we love it: All the Amazon inventory at your fingertips

It’s not an app in itself; it’s a feature embedded in the Amazon app’s search bar that allows you to perform a visual search of the Amazon inventory. So, if you’re interested in shopping from Amazon, this is your best choice.

Follow these steps to use StyleSnap:

1. Download the Amazon app if you don’t have it already
2. In the search bar, click on the camera icon on the right
3. Click on the StyleSnap icon in the lower-left corner
4. Upload your picture
5. That’s it! You should get results in a few seconds.

The algorithm should be able to identify all the clothing and accessories in the picture. Each piece is marked with a dot, so you can select the things you’re interested in and see the results only for those.

For example, it identified the blouse, skirt, bag, and shoes from the picture we uploaded. We were able to go to each of them and see the relevant results. If you click on any of those, it will take you to the product page where you can shop.

In our experience, StyleSnap worked smoothly, returning results impressively fast.

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Pinterest Lens

Why we love it: Great for inspiration

Pinterest also provides a visual search feature inside its app, called Pinterest Lens. If you are already a Pinterest app user, there’s no need to download anything else.

Follow these steps to use Pinterest Lens:

1. Download the Pinterest app if you don’t have it already (Android, iOS)
2. Click on the search icon
3. Once on the search page, click on the camera icon at the right of the search bar.
4. Click on the left lower corner to upload your picture
5. That’s it!

In this case, the AI was able to identify the blouse, skirt, and shoes. It missed the bag. If we were interested in searching for similar bags, it would be advisable to upload a picture where the bag is more visible.

Like Amazon’s Style Snap, you can zoom in on the identified items to search for those.

We love the app user experience in general, and the visual search feature is no exception. It returns results fast and provides two categories: Explore and Shop. The first one is great if you’re just looking for inspiration, but if you fell in love with an item and are ready to buy it, just click on it and you will be directed to the seller’s website.

Google Lens

Why we love it: Search against millions of products; exact match results

The best about Google Lens is that you can try it from an app that you most likely already have, such as Google Photos, or even from your browser, so there’s no need even to install an app! 

In this case, we used the Google Photos app. If you want to try it, follow the instructions:

1. Download the Google Photos app if you don’t have it already
2. Go to the photo you want to search for clothing from
3. Click on the camera icon on the bottom
4. That’s it. Google algorithm will work its magic!

It works super fast and has a good user experience. Like Amazon StyleSnap, it detects all items in an outfit and allows you to tap each of them to see the results. 

However, in our case, it detected more than just the clothing and accessories. It also caught the plants and pots in the picture, which is expected since Google performs a more general search, and it’s not limited to fashion.

If you want to exclude certain items in the picture from the search, you can try cropping it and focus on the clothing you’re after.

If you’re looking for an exact match, this is probably your best option! Given that Google can search against basically the whole web.

Lykdat

Why we love it: Advanced search with exact match results and the possibility to filter

Lykdat works as a web app in your browser, so you don’t need to download an app.

To use Lykdat, follow these steps:

1. Open a browser and go to the Lykdat website
2. Click on “Search with an image.”
3. Upload your picture
4. You can crop it if you want to focus on a particular piece.
5. Get your results.

We found Lykdat very easy to use, it works super fast, and the results are accurate! It’s also great that it lets you crop the picture before uploading it.

Lykdat can detect several different items in a picture, and you can click on each of them to analyze the result separately. In this case, it caught the top, skirt, shoes, and even the bag (not all apps detected it)!

We have to say the results are one of the most accurate as we got the exact match for the shoes. We also loved that once you have the results, you can filter by gender, location, color, etc.

Lykdat is one of the most advanced solutions if you’re serious about finding exact matches and customizing your search. 

Asos Style Match

Why we love it: Specific and targeted to Asos inventory

The concept of Asos Style Match is very similar to those presented above; you can take or upload a picture and get similar matches right away. 

Of course, the difference is that you will just get results from the Asos inventory, which is more limited than doing a broad search like with Google, so you might not find exact matches.

Follow these steps to use Asos Style Match:

1. Download the Asos app if you don’t have it already
2. In the top search bar, click on the camera icon
3. Click on the lower right corner to upload a picture
4. Get your results

Instantly, we got the best matches from the Asos inventory for the picture we uploaded. The only downside is that you cannot select an item to focus on. For example, I don’t know if I’m getting results for the skirt, blouse, or a bit of everything.

In this case, if you’re interested in a particular item, you can crop the picture before searching to just focus on what you’re looking for. 

Final thoughts

Finding clothes from a picture is now possible with the help of AI. The visual search technology allows you to upload any photo and find fashion items similar in color or style. It’s an excellent way for those who have just had their heart set on wearing one thing but can’t seem to find it anywhere online.

If would like to know more about useful apps for fashion, check out our article on how to plan your outfits using technology!

From trying on clothes to sneakers to makeup, these apps will let you see how you’d look in different outfits on yourself or an avatar before you ever step foot in a store. So grab your phone and download one (or all) of these apps today!

Apps to virtually try on clothes

PICTOFiT Shopping

Website

Download the iOS app

Price: Free

PICTOFiT Shopping lets you create a personalized, interactive, and enjoyable shopping experience by allowing you to try on outfits virtually.

You can go through a large selection of apparel from various companies. Simply put it in your dressing room when you find anything you like. 

If you want a more personalized experience, you can use the app’s unique feature to build a photorealistic avatar. Simply provide a few physical dimensions, scan your face, and enjoy your photo-realistic avatar. 

You can virtually try on clothes in the dressing room after your avatar is ready in a matter of minutes. You may mix and match your choices to quickly and easily create complete outfits. You’ll also be able to test them in various background scenarios!

Goodstyle

Website

Download the iOS app

Download the Android app

Price: Subscription – $2.99 per month or $24.99 per year

GoodStyle is a straightforward and helpful software for anyone interested in modern technology and fashion trends. Install the app on iOS or Android on your smartphone to create your virtual outfit.

To finish the avatar, take a selfie and enjoy the process of virtually putting on clothes. To get incredibly concrete and exact recommendations, you can specify your attributes such as body type, gender, skin color, and personal preferences.

Men and women can use technology to test garments before making a purchase. Dresses, skirts, tops, shorts, skirts, sweaters, jackets, trousers, jeans, and other apparel categories are virtual try-ons. 

Virtual shoe fitting is an additional feature included with the application. As we know, a good pair of shoes can make or break any ensemble!

Apps to virtually try on footwear

Wanna

Website

Download the iOS app

Download the Android app

Price: Free

The app, dubbed “Wanna Kicks,” employs augmented reality to allow you to try on numerous pairs of sneakers. Simply select a pair of shoes from the collection, point your camera at your feet, and you’re virtually wearing your chosen footwear.

Wannaby, the company behind the app, claims that it employs sophisticated 3D geometry algorithms in conjunction with neural networks to determine the position of the shoe in space. According to the startup, these algorithms are its secret sauce and the company’s key innovation.

Wanna Kicks can help you discover new and vintage sneakers. Try on the sneakers right now, no matter where you are, and then take a photo to impress your pals. You may also receive new releases every week through the app, view them on your feet, and share your favorites with others.

RELATED ARTICLE: What Is Fashion Trend Forecasting? And How It Relates To AI and Social Media

SneakerKit

Website

Download the iOS app

Download the Android app

Price: Free

SneakerKit app, created by the Vyking company, has a revolutionary 3D foot tracking system that can monitor human feet for AR applications, enabling “on-foot” product visualization.

Vyking’s foot tracking app works flawlessly on any smartphone for feet wearing socks, shoes or going barefoot.

Vyking’s Augmented Reality shoe try-on allows you to try on both the latest and most classic pairs from the past decades. They’re developing cutting-edge technology that will change the way you shop for sneakers online.

Adidas

Website

Download the iOS app

Download the Android app

Price: Free

To improve the consumer experience, Adidas’ virtual try-on tool in its iOS app intends to allow shoppers to choose out new shoe designs without setting foot in a shoe store. Just download the Adidas app, navigate to a product you like, point your smartphone at your feet, and the virtual models will emerge!

Adidas has collaborated with Vyking, an AR try-on technology startup specializing in AR solutions for e-commerce and digital retail, to create the functionality. 

The software used by Vyking tracks your foot movements, allowing the virtual try-on experience to run in real-time with or without your shoes on. Users can view the shoes from every angle as if they were wearing them.

Apps to virtually try on accessories

Gucci

Website

Download the iOS app

Download the Android app

Price: Free

Gucci, the premium brand, has incorporated AR technology into its marketing mix in a variety of ways to engage mobile customers and improve the in-store shopping experience. 

The Gucci app allows users to download wallpapers, take photos with House stickers and themes, utilize AR to enhance locales, and virtually experiment on eyeglasses, sneakers, masks, lipsticks, and hats.

Not only that, but you can also watch Gucci fashion shows, play Gucci Arcade games, personalize products in the Gucci DIY section, and explore the GG Marmont bags in 3D.

Wannaby, a business on a mission to produce AR commerce experiences and the inventors of the Wanna Kicks app mentioned above, provided the tech underpinning the shoe try on. The Gucci virtual try-on experiences have also been powered by Snapchat technology.

RELATED ARTICLE: AI In The Fashion Industry: 6 Game-Changing Technologies

Warby Parker

Website

Download the iOS app

Price: Free

Numerous applications and websites allow you to overlay a pair of glasses on your face. Still, Warby Parker takes things a step further by using augmented reality to render the glasses in a live, 3D preview on your face.

Unlike the Home Try-On option, which sends you five frames from a limited selection to try on, the Virtual Try-On tool is accessible for any pair of frames you locate in the app.

You can add a pair to your favorites list if you make an account by tapping the heart icon. If you genuinely like a pair, you may snap a screenshot of the virtual frames on your face to save or share by tapping the camera symbol in the top right.

Warby Parker’s virtual try-on function is only available on the iPhone because it relies on Apple’s ARKit and True Depth technologies.

Forecasting is thus a vital component of the ever-changing fashion sector. So, what exactly is trend forecasting, and how is it done in the AI era? Continue reading to find out!

What is fashion trend forecasting?

Fashion trend forecasting is the process of projecting future fashion trends. The projections allow fashion designers and merchants to know what will be fashionable in the future and plan their collections and merchandising appropriately.

Trend forecasting in fashion aims to create a story using shapes, design elements, colors, fabrics, and trims. Trend forecasters make reports and mood boards that designers use to create new clothing and accessories for brands.

Short term trend forecasting

Short-term and close-to-season forecasts give a good idea of what customers will want in the next 6 – 12 months.

Microtrends have a role in short-term forecasting. Short-term projections vary by season and are often concerned with color, style, and the impact of current events and pop culture.

Long term trend forecasting

Long-term forecasting examines broader directional points that suggest a societal change, commonly known as macro trends. A macro trend forecast depicts consumer lifestyles and makes forecasts across categories.

Long-term forecasting seeks to identify significant changes in local and international demographics, shifts in the fashion industry, consumer expectations, values, and purchase impetus. For example, consumers now tend to favor sustainable fashion, a macro trend.

Technological, scientific, economic, political, and cultural changes can also impact macro trends. A great example is a COVID-19 pandemic, which has changed the way we consume and the products we need or are interested in. 

RELATED ARTICLE: Can AI Truly Replace Models And Influencers In The Future?

How do companies forecast fashion trends?

To effectively predict fashion trends, it is necessary to observe and study social-cultural movements to project a short, medium, or long-term impact on fashion direction. Trend forecasters develop a scenario using a combination of intuition and data, which they then present through writing and mood boards.

To generate a forecast with confidence, an immense scope of information must be gathered through research. One of the challenges of trend forecasting and why agencies’ services frequently come at a significant price is the complexity required for research and collecting relevant data.

Every brand’s trend forecasting process is unique. Womenswear brands, for example, invest more in micro trend analysis than male brands because they produce more collections every year. Forecasting is also affected by the company’s size and target market. 

Here are some of the sources that businesses utilize to make forecasts.

• Attending fashion shows – Noting the most promising designs and then bringing that knowledge to chain-store product producers from the catwalk. The process is known as “top-down” forecasting, and it is based on how fashion trends spread from haute couture runways to high street stores.
• Following influencers – Today, trend forecasters are more likely to go to influencers, street style, and blogs for information on the newest trends. This technique is known as “bottom-up” forecasting.
• Using a trend forecasting agency – Larger firms that aren’t vertically integrated frequently rely on the knowledge of trend forecasting agencies, who create trend research reports for them.

Most trend forecasters rely on a combination of “top-down” and “bottom-up” forecasting, plus an intimate knowledge of the fashion scene and personal intuition to make fashion predictions.  

However, such systems are often inefficient, costly, and heavily reliant on the expertise of the experts, which frequently incorporates bias into the predicting findings.

But just as every other area of life, AI has made its way into fashion trend forecasting, and it’s aimed to shape its future by making more accurate and more efficient predictions. 

The role of social media and AI in fashion trend forecasting

The Internet, and hence social media, has expedited the life cycle of trends, giving rise to phenomena such as fast fashion and global supply chains. Due to the digital age, trend virality, time-to-market speed, and consumer behavior have all transformed in the previous decade. But those same technological advancements are also shaping the future of trend forecasting.

Fashion forecasting services currently use new technologies to predict what’s next in trend. In fashion forecasting, AI is frequently used to analyze text and hashtags on social media, online collections, and customer activity on e-commerce.

Fashion trend forecasting is gaining study attention as an upstream research task in computational fashion analysis. It is typically researched via the lens of fundamentally related tasks such as fashion recognition, detection, retrieval, and segmentation.

As a computational problem, fashion forecasting extends beyond just predicting the future purchase rate of an item seen in the past. As a result, it is more than just a regression problem.

Instead, the forecaster must speculate on styles that will become popular in the future to build yet-unseen style compositions. The capacity to forecast the future of styles rather than individual clothes is appealing for applications that require models that reflect where trends as a whole are headed.

The purchase record on either online or offline retailing platforms is a prominent data source for fashion trend analysis. But people’s purchasing decisions are impacted by various circumstances such as promotions and thus do not reveal the genuine fashion preferences of users or the actual fashion trend.

Social media captures people’s daily lives worldwide and has evolved into a platform for increasing users to express their fashion preferences and opinions. As a result, it provides a natural outlet for study on trend analysis.

Furthermore, data from social media is enormous, diverse, closely related to the fashion trend, and has a long time span, making intelligent large-scale fashion trend analysis conceivable and valuable.

RELATED ARTICLE: AI In The Fashion Industry: 6 Game-Changing Technologies

That is precisely what Heuritech, a fashion forecasting firm, is doing. Their patented image recognition engine can recognize and classify thousands of components in a single social media snapshot, including forms, characteristics, fabrics, textures, patterns, and colors.

Heuritech’s technology determines that it is looking at a photo of a striped t-shirt, for example, since it detects the product has a crew neck, short sleeves, distinct colored stripes, and even the fabric type. Because this technology analyzes millions of photos every day, the volume of striped t-shirts may also be calculated.

Heuritech can forecast future behavior by quantifying a trend’s prior growth and evolution by looking at its volume or popularity.

These forecasts are critical for merchandisers and designers to see how a particular product is being accepted in real-time, by what type of customer, and in which areas throughout the world.

Then, by utilizing AI to transform real-world photographs posted on social media into relevant data, Heuritech can enable companies to more correctly predict demand and trends, manufacture more sustainably, and reach exceptional competitive advantage.

We may see AI models incorporating more diverse data about consumers in the near future. For example, this paper addresses the fashion trend forecasting problem based on social media, aiming to mine the complex patterns in the historical time series records of fashion elements and predict future trends accordingly. 

The researchers concluded that, although desirable results were achieved, some aspects could be further improved in the future. For example, including information that specifies the user’s fashion preference, such as occupations or hobbies, and more knowledge sources that have significant impacts, such as fashion magazines, bloggers, and brands.

Final thoughts

The use of high-tech in fashion trend forecasting is still in its early stages, but it can completely change the way businesses operate. By harnessing the power of AI and social media, we can get a more accurate picture of what styles will be popular next season or even next year. We can expect even more sophisticated predictions and trends from AI-assisted fashion forecasting as this technology evolves!

Fashion models and influencers are becoming less popular as AI takes over. With the help of technology, fashion brands can create digital models that will promote their clothing to millions of followers on social media platforms like Instagram. These AI-generated fashion icons could potentially replace human ones in the future.

But to understand if we may one day see digitally generated models walking down catwalks or gracing magazine covers helps first to know how the technology works, its advantages, and challenges. So, let’s get started!

What are CGI models or influencers?

Virtual or CGI models are fictitious representations of actual people created by computers.

​​CGI uses computer software to create still or animated visual material. CGI is most commonly used to describe the 3D computer graphics used to create characters, scenes, and special effects in films and video games. Advertising, architecture, engineering, virtual reality, and even art use the technology.

Therefore, CGI models and influencers are virtual humans modeled and handcrafted by designers and programmers.

One of the most prominent examples might be Miquela (@liliquela), an influencer with 3 million Instagram followers and a flair for offering valuable tips, entirely phony.

Miquela even worked with Prada for Milan Fashion Week 2018 by uploading photographs of herself wearing their spring/summer 2018 collection while digitally attending their catwalk presentation, which is just one of many fantastic examples of AI influencers blurring the line between the digital and physical worlds.

But Miquela isn’t the first or last artificial intelligence influencer; in 2018, Olivier Rousteing, the creative director of the Balmain fashion brand, stated that his campaign would feature a whole cast of CGI models. Shudu (@shudu.gram), the world’s first digital supermodel, was among Rousteing’s cast members.

Shudu has been published in Vogue, a fashion magazine, where supermodels from all over the world compete for space on its pages.

CGI is not just taking over the influencer world. It has already made it to the field of traditional modeling.

DataGrid is a Japanese IT company whose AI algorithms employ generative adversarial networks (GANs) to create and simulate modeling. The digital models may give a wide range of posing possibilities identical to e-commerce and commercial modeling. 

Zalando, a German e-commerce behemoth, has also released research papers using the GAN technique. The researchers developed an AI system capable of transferring customizable clothing and body positions from one fashion model. They employed an architecture primarily based on StyleGAN, a technology first released by NVIDIA in 2018.

It appears that it is just a matter of time until other fashion behemoths join on board.

How GCI models benefit marketing and eCommerce

GCI can assist marketers in reaching out to customers with highly targeted and tailored communications. It also allows influencers and celebrities to quickly widen their reach by agreeing to face a fashion ad campaign and model clothing without ever showing up for a photoshoot. 

This isn’t a massive jump in a world where digital identities, such as gaming avatars, are already crossing with real-life identities, and CGI models are mingling with real-life influencers.

Consider a novel agreement where an influencer offers a business a sample of a few minutes of audio content and a few video clips. A brand may use deepfake technology—a type of CGI that uses AI to replace one person’s likeness with another in recorded footage—to turn the content into hundreds of hyper-targeted adverts.

RELATED POST: Can AI Replace Fashion Designers? The Answer Might Surprise You

Influencers may start renting their faces and voices to marketers. A computer can take their features and voices, duplicate them in various languages or poses, and choose the most convincing one.

The technology has already been applied successfully, for a good cause. A malaria awareness campaign starring David Beckham speaking nine languages in 2019 demonstrated how deepfakes might widen the reach of a public message, garnering 400 million impressions globally in two months.

Tencent mentions that the technology is already being utilized to create virtual models of various body shapes and ethnicities and allows consumers to try on garments digitally for a more engaging online shopping experience.

CGI technology may considerably minimize the time and waste associated with clothing sampling as an added benefit. It can reduce millions of tons of fabric waste while also propelling us more sustainable and efficient future.

It’s not unheard of for a model to shoot dozens of outfits for an e-commerce session in a single day, and most of those samples end wasted in landfills.

The unrealistic beauty standards of CGI models

Despite the apparent benefits of these new technologies, some challenges are impossible to ignore, and we would like to highlight a critical one.

One must wonder what type of beauty standard CGI models are establishing. Do we now have to compete with perfectly symmetrical CGI models on top of the unrealistic beauty standards of the fashion and beauty industries? 

We’ve watched innumerable people struggle to live up to their favorite supermodel’s beauty; imagine if that supermodel’s beauty was computer-generated; it’s a challenging idea to grasp.

The actual meaning of unreachable beauty begs how this will affect future generations. While it may be advantageous for many organizations looking to promote online, the benefits of utilizing CGI models may not outweigh the possible detrimental influence on our genuine impression of beauty.

So, will models and influencers be replaced by AI in the future?

Modeling as a job has a high potential of being replaced by automation, calculated at around 93%.

There’s no denying that AI and CGI are cutting-edge technology. They may enhance human models to increase engagement and reach while hopefully keeping their authenticity. As technology progresses, we’ll see more marketing agencies employing CGI techniques to stay current. As a result, the number of human models may substantially decrease.

However, we believe that models and influencers will always be needed because of a personal connection with clients. Technology will never completely replace the human touch.

The role of AI in art and design

Technology that can mimic human mental processes may be frightening, especially when the issue of creativity enters the picture. For many, invention explains humankind’s growth throughout history, and this creative thinking distinguishes humans from the rest.

AI is typically viewed with skepticism by individuals in the creative areas because its overtones of complex logic appear to take away from the emotional method of conventional creatives. However, utilizing the Internet was unthinkable 100 years ago, and it has now become an extension of the creative process.

The Internet has not replaced painting, product design, or couture. Similarly, AI will be, and already is, a tool for taking human creativity to new heights and opening doors we didn’t know existed.

While AI might replace designers, it will do so for today’s designers rather than tomorrow’s. AI will evolve into a design collaborator and tool that designers may employ to satisfy the changing demands of the workplace.

RELATED POST: AI In The Fashion Industry: 6 Game-Changing Technologies

Can AI design clothes?

The short answer is yes; AI can design clothes. But how good or viable those designs are is a different question. Let’s review what has been done to the present.

AI enables machines to do human-like activities such as reading text, perceiving pictures, and making judgments. It accomplishes this through algorithms or sets of rules applied to data. For instance, if you provide numerous photographs of women wearing red dresses, it may ultimately learn to recognize them and eventually “design” them as well.

The availability of datasets such as DeepFashion has created new opportunities for the fashion sector. Not only can AI assist us in predicting the category of a clothing item, but it can also assist us in creating computer-generated pictures of similar-looking things.

Until the invention of Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), making realistic fashion photos was a complicated process because of the enormous data in the photographs. Images are often high resolution, resulting in a large number of pixels. GANs have provided academics with a feasible technique of generating and validating all of this data.

A GAN is a prominent paradigm for unsupervised machine learning that involves the interaction of two neural networks – a generator and a discriminator. The generator’s job is to create graphics from the random noise it receives as input. The discriminator’s job is to determine if the produced pictures are authentic or fraudulent (or visually realistic and appealing, in the case of fashion).

Famous fashion houses have provided remarkable AI-driven solutions, such as the Tommy Hilfiger, IBM, and Fashion Institute of Technology collaboration Reimagine Retail, which aims to identify future industry trends and improve the design process.

Fashion designers have been investigating AI as an addition to their design process. For example, the German-based fashion platform Zalando worked together with Google in Project Muze to test what is possible in AI-driven fashion design.

RELATED POST: Can AI Truly Replace Models And Influencers In The Future?

Many experts believe that 3D and AI technology will be around for various reasons, notably pinpointing specific consumer needs. The digital clothing sector is a feasible solution to waste and pollution concerns.

Without even realizing it, the game industry has also helped pave the path for fashion. Skins have been sold in games like World of Warcraft and Fortnight for over two decades. Few could have imagined that this notion would one day be applied to the typical consumer’s real-life wardrobe.

Characters in video games are more lifelike because of 3D AI technology, which includes subtleties like natural physical motions, facial expressions, and clothing that flow in the wind or against the body. 

As a result, this technology is increasingly being employed in the fashion industry to assess and replicate the genuine nature of the fabric and fit for consumers to make real-life or digital apparel. 

RELATED POST: How Long Do Fashion Trends Last? Distinguish Between Fads, Trends And Classics

So, will AI replace fashion designers?

Fashion design has a low automation risk (estimated at around 3%). This score is determined by the talents, knowledge, skills, and activities needed to complete the job, such as originality, social perceptiveness, persuasion, and finger dexterity. The more these a profession demands, the less likely it will be replaced.

However, there’s no doubt that AI and machine learning-driven innovation have become critical success factors for fashion design organizations in the twenty-first century.

As a result, tremendous progress has recently been achieved in adopting AI and machine learning approaches for augmented and customized design. Examples include style matching, trend predicting, interactive search, style advice, virtually putting on garments, and clothing type and style classification. 

Many people feel that AI may be useful for fashion designers, just as architects utilize computer modeling to help with the design, mainly due to AI’s ability to analyze and store massive amounts of data.

But while AI excels at assessing hundreds of fashion concepts at once, extracting the best characteristics from each, and swiftly developing a mock-up design, we believe the algorithm cannot wholly replace people.

We have our creativity, our emotions, and our human experiences. So, when paired with AI-powered creativity, we believe the future is exciting. We can collaborate with AI rather than compete with it.

We should not wonder, “Will AI replace fashion designers?” The right question is, “How will AI assist and improve fashion designers’ work?” Designers in the fashion business will adopt AI to enhance their design talents and improve their product development approach.

Initially, AI automation did not seem appealing for fashion executives to utilize in an industry founded on creative ability and expression. However, as we enter the hyper-digital age, these applications can transform businesses and generate significant industry growth and revenues compared to competitors using traditional methods.

Despite the fashion industry’s established nature, AI fundamentally alters the sector, from how fashion businesses make their items to promoted and sold. AI technologies are revolutionizing the fashion industry across the board, including design, production, shipping, marketing, and sales.

The usage of AI in the fashion business of 2020 has grown so entrenched that a high percentage of fashion stores that have not implemented AI are now risking insolvency. Consequently, the fashion and retail industries’ worldwide investment in AI technology is predicted to reach $7.3 billion per year by 2022.

Let’s look at some of these AI applications and how firms adopt unique methods to enhance their business models.

Apparel designing

AI solutions for fashion design have been somehow neglected. Still, they have enormous potential for an industry that is rapidly automating its design and presentation processes during the pandemic and, most likely, after that. What are the new opportunities for designers and businesses, and why is creative AI so underutilized?

Initial AI implementations have focused on measurable business demands. Creativity is significantly more challenging to quantify and far more prone to lag. But as more research scientists develop new models for creativity, the potentials of the technology become more evident. AI models could become fashion designers’ best friends very soon.

The AI models that have been employed to generate novel apparel design are generative adversarial networks (GANs), a type of Machine Learning (ML) in which two adversarial models are trained concurrently: a generator (“the designer”) that learns to create images that look real and a discriminator (“the design critic”) that learns to distinguish between real and fake photos. 

The generator becomes better at creating legitimate images during training, while the discriminator becomes better at detecting fakes. Computer-generated images and movements can appear believable (and potentially aesthetically pleasing) to the spectator due to the imaginative use of technology.

But AI can aid with more than just generating new designs. By gathering more sophisticated data, fashion manufacturers use technology to understand consumer desires better and make better garments. Zalando, a German fashion marketplace, was one of the pioneers of AI-powered fashion design based on the customer’s favorite colors, textures, and other style preferences in collaboration with Google.

Synflux is another company blending fashion and AI. They’re collaborating on a project called Algorithmic Couture. Synflux uses ML to create optimal fashion pattern modules, modeled using computer-aided design tools. 

Virtual merchandising

Many of us have a closet full of items we never wear because they are uncomfortable, look cheap, don’t suit our body type, or match the rest of our wardrobe. It’s unavoidable when so many online businesses utilize photographs that entice us to buy yet don’t necessarily provide a true-to-life depiction of a garment.

AI-enabled technologies like augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are now trying to solve the problem above by bridging the gap between online and in-store purchase experiences.

According to some analysts, the pandemic will hasten the shift to online shopping by five years. Even again, it is doubtful that fashion will become completely touch-free: many people still want to go to actual malls where they can explore and try on real clothes. Retailers may appeal to this kinesthetic demographic by utilizing in-store AR and VR solutions. These technologies enhance the shopping experience by making it more immersive and pleasant.

Fashion businesses use AR technology to provide new features to traditional and online purchasing. As a consumer, you may experiment with different styles, textures, and colors, and different shoes, purses, and jewelry items to complete your appearance.

An example of this technology is the Wanna app, which employs augmented reality to allow you to try on several pairs of sneakers. Simply select a pair of shoes from the collection of 3D models, point your camera at your feet, and presto — you’re virtually wearing your selected footwear.

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Visual search

Consider the following example: You’re out for a walk when you notice someone wearing the most beautiful dress you’ve ever seen. You want the same, but you don’t know what brand they’re wearing or where you can get it. You can search online, but you’ll just get a few, primarily irrelevant, results, and you’ll be no closer to finding your new favorite dress.

In this example, visual search, like text-based search, scans and recognizes user-input photographs and delivers the most relevant search results. Customers can search for what they want without explaining it, making purchasing online more straightforward and gratifying.

Some AI-enabled apps allow users to take screenshots of online clothes, detect shoppable gear and accessories in the image, and then discover the same outfit and shop for similar fashions. 

Apps like Pinterest or Google Photos implement a visual search feature. Still, only a few specialize in apparel and help users find more target items. One example is, Lykdat, a reverse image tool to find fashion goods using photographs. Consider it the Shazam of clothing. The customers simply submit a photo of the apparel items. The algorithm will return a list of online retailers that sell these goods.

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Improved customer personalization

Personalization is essential for business success. Because of considerable data innovation, there is an amount of customer data available to be accessed and studied. When integrated with business data, deep learning technologies such as AI and ML enable fashion firms to follow individual client buying behavior.

Marketers increasingly leverage growing technology’s knowledge and computational skills to comprehend shoppers’ expectations and influence their experience based on purchases, favorite colors, textures, and other style preferences.

In a crowded arena, one-of-a-kind, personalized advertisements cut through the clutter, and customers are willing to give personal information for a more customized experience. Already, product suggestions based on such algorithms account for 35% of what people buy on Amazon.

One of the world’s leading athletic footwear and athleisure businesses, Nike is not surpassed in the personalization game. Nike has pushed personalization to the next level by allowing customers to design their sneakers with the Nike By You platform, which they define as a co-creation service.

Automated authentication

Computer Vision powered by ML is also used to detect fashion forgeries and counterfeit items. Detecting fakes formerly required professional customs or other law enforcement personnel’s trained eye.

AI algorithms can now monitor counterfeit items becoming more similar to the real thing. Customs and border officials are employing AI technology to help determine the authenticity of high-end products that are frequently counterfeited, such as handbags and sunglasses.

While browsing enormous internet marketplaces, ordinary customers may struggle to recognize counterfeit items from a third-party seller. When a buyer buys a product that appears legitimate but performs poorly, it can leave a bad taste and harm their opinion of the brand.

Some organizations use AI to examine and identify potentially counterfeit products by relying on massive datasets and pictures from numerous online marketplaces.

Entrupy has created artificial intelligence-powered authentication solutions for firms that acquire and sell high-value commodities. Their cutting-edge authentication solutions are powered by a mix of ML and Computer Vision, as well as a proprietary database containing millions of photographs of genuine and counterfeit items collected from across the world. 

Its technology is used to authenticate handbags and accessories from several luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton, Chanel, and Hermès by major resellers and professional buyers of luxury goods.

Trend forecasting

Trend forecasting is a field that focuses on projecting a market’s future. Thus, fashion forecasting is the branch of the fashion business concerned with projecting new fashion trends—colors, styling techniques, fabric textures, and so on—that will pique consumer interest. 

Fashion forecasters generate trend forecasts, which product developers utilize to design new garments and accessories for businesses.

But an individual fashion trend forecaster would never be able to examine that quantity of data in time for the following season, so utilizing AI to perform the heavy work frees up forecasters to search for emerging trends in less traditional sectors, such as movies, television, or even politics.

To foresee trend evolutions, Heuritech created an in-house deep-learning technique that detects what is known as early signals. Early indicators include slight shifts in the activity among edgy influencers, who frequently give trends life.

Heuritech helps companies to anticipate demand and trends more precisely, manufacture more sustainably, and gain exceptional competitive advantage by leveraging powerful AI to transform real-world photographs posted on social media into relevant information.

Social media isn’t the only thing that’s changed the way trend forecasters make their forecasts; many businesses also use artificial intelligence to find new trends. Fashion Snoops, for example, employs artificial intelligence to scour the internet for buzzwords and new terminology that have the potential to evolve into something stylish.

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Final thoughts

For fashion brands, AI and ML can be game-changer. It will allow for faster customer service, better user experiences in the store environment, and more sustainable business practices. The future of fashion is looking bright!