AI in fashion design has become part of designers’ everyday work. It is no longer a passing trend — it now shows up at every stage of the process, from the first sketch on paper to the final client presentation, long before a single piece of fabric is cut. Most articles on this subject stop at naming the tools, without explaining what they actually do or who really uses them. This article goes further: eight real tools, backed by numbers from the companies themselves and the major brands that rely on them.

Design and Concept Generation

Onbrand AI Design turns a text description, a rough sketch, or even a reference photo into a realistic visual, simulating how the fabric drapes and behaves, and automatically generating flat sketches ready for technical archiving. Individual elements — a sleeve, a print — can be edited without redrawing the whole piece, and version history lets teams track changes through review rounds, with direct export to PLM software. The company reports that brands using the tool have cut the number of physical samples needed by 30–50%, because many decisions are now settled on screen rather than in the workshop, and that pairing it with a PLM system saves roughly ten working weeks a year by connecting design directly to development. NewArc.ai, meanwhile, is used specifically to turn a hand sketch into a photo-realistic image or a fast 3D render — cutting out hours once spent on detailed manual illustration and letting a designer test dozens of directions before committing to one.

3D Simulation and Digital Patternmaking

This is the most mature and industrially embedded category on this list. CLO 3D has become close to a global standard in teaching and applying 3D design — its 2025 annual meetup in Munich drew more than 300 fashion professionals from across Europe alone, and its official client list includes names like Adidas. Browzwear is used by more than 1,000 fashion companies worldwide, including major names such as Nike, Target, Under Armour, VF Corporation, Puma and Walmart, across operations in more than 30 countries, with over 10 million digital garments created on the platform to date. The company says its clients cut physical samples by 50–80%, reach first-sample accuracy of up to 95%, halve development time (from 3–4 months to about half that, according to one client), cut total costs by up to 35%, and reduce fabric waste by up to 80% — numbers that explain why this technology has stopped being a “nice-to-have” and become a competitive necessity. Style3D AI is a fast-growing competitor in AI-integrated 3D simulation. The idea behind all three: see the garment “worn” virtually on different body sizes before any real fabric is cut, catching fit and pattern problems early and saving the cost of repeated samples usually shipped by air or sea from the factory.

Virtual Photography and Marketing Content

Fashable is an AI generation platform built specifically for campaign-ready content: virtual models, tech packs, virtual try-on, next-season trend analysis, and moodboards. The company says it has generated more than 2.4 million visual assets so far, at a generation rate of under 45 seconds per image — a realistic substitute for a full photoshoot when testing an early marketing concept. Refabric offers a generative design board called Design Canvas, letting a designer produce creative concepts ready to present to a client directly, without a full photoshoot or even a real model at the pitch stage — useful specifically when proposing a design before production is approved.

How These Tools Come Together in One Workflow

In practice, these tools aren’t used in isolation. A designer starts with a sketch or description in Onbrand or NewArc.ai to quickly test dozens of directions, moves the chosen design into CLO 3D or Browzwear to simulate it on the body and confirm fit and pattern before any real production, and finally uses tools like Fashable or Refabric to produce marketing images or present to a client without waiting for a real fabric sample. This sequence is exactly why brands the size of Nike and Puma invest in more than one tool from these categories at once, rather than just one.

An Opportunity, Not a Threat

The common idea that AI replaces the designer doesn’t hold up — and the numbers above prove it. Every one of these tools, even at companies like Nike, Puma and Adidas, still needs a designer’s eye to decide what to design in the first place, and to understand proportion, material and target market — exactly what no tool can replace. What these tools do is speed up the technical stages that can be sped up: sampling, simulation, and visual content generation, while the creative decision stays with the human.
For anyone who wants to systematically master integrating these tools into their professional workflow, the AI in Fashion module within the Diploma of Human and Technological Creativity for Fashion Designers includes hands-on, step-by-step work with similar tools. More details at annastella-academy.com/courses/