Introduction
In the last few months, I’ve been thinking about starting my own fashion business. In order to realize it, one of the first things I'd need is a proper design sample that I could eventually send to a fabricator or manufacturer.
I'm pretty comfortable with some of design tools, like Figma or Canva. I use it to design the artwork that will be used for my clothing design. But, when it comes to the mockup sample, there is a problem. I've been searching and also trying some of mockup templates that Figma and Canva provide, but i feel like the template often looks flat.
The artwork often felt like it was simply placed on top of the garment instead of actually being part of it. It didn’t really follow the fabric, folds, shadows, or natural shape of the clothing. It looked good enough to present an idea, but not quite realistic enough to imagine how the piece would look once it was actually produced.
I wanted something that felt a bit closer to an actual manufactured piece. Something where I could play around with different designs and placements, while getting a better sense of what the final garment might look like before spending money on a physical sample. So instead of trying to find another tool that could do exactly what I wanted, I decided to make this app.
The idea
The first idea I had in mind is pretty simple. You start by choosing a garment, whether it’s a short or long sleeve tee, or a short or long sleeve shirt. From there, you can simply drag and drop your artwork onto the garment, resize it, move it around, and adjust the placement until it looks the way you want.
What makes it different from a regular mockup is how the artwork interacts with the garment itself. In most mockup tools, the design can sometimes feel like an image placed on top of a shirt. It works for visualization, but it doesn’t always give you a good sense of how the design would actually look when printed on real fabric.
With this app, I wanted the artwork to feel like it actually belongs on the garment. As you move and adjust the design, it follows the fabric, folds, shape, lighting, and shading of the clothing. So if part of the shirt bends or folds, the artwork adapts to that area instead of staying completely flat.
I wanted to keep the experience as simple as a normal drag-and-drop mockup editor, without adding too many complicated controls. The main difference is in the result. It should feel more natural and give you a better idea of how your design could look on an actual piece of clothing.
Taking the Mockup Further
While building this app, I started thinking about how I could take the idea a little further and make it more useful, especially for people who are starting a clothing business from zero, like me.
Before spending money on physical samples, photoshoots, models, and everything else that comes with launching a fashion brand, I thought, why not generate some of it with AI first?
The idea is to get a better visual of what the final garment could look like before actually producing it. Instead of relying only on a flat mockup, I wanted to see something that feels closer to a real, physical piece of clothing. And beyond that, I wanted to see how the design might actually look when worn by a model.
For someone starting a business from scratch, keeping expenses as low as possible is pretty important. Physical samples and photoshoots can get expensive, especially when you’re still experimenting with designs and don’t even know which ones you’ll end up producing.
Of course, I don’t see AI-generated images as a complete replacement for real product photography. If I eventually launch the brand, I’d still want to do proper photoshoots with the actual garments. But during the early stages, I think AI can be useful for exploring ideas, validating designs, and getting a clearer picture of the product before committing more money to it.
It could also be useful for creating early campaigns, lookbooks, social media posts, or simply figuring out the visual direction of the brand before organizing a real photoshoot.
As I continued building the drag-and-drop editor, I realized that even with the fabric interaction, folds, and shading, sometimes it still wasn’t enough. It looked better than a completely flat mockup, but at the end of the day, it was still a mockup.
The fabric could use more texture, some details needed refinement, and the overall garment didn’t always have that fully manufactured look I was trying to achieve. That’s when I decided to add another feature with AI behind it.
Refining the Design in Studio
I added a separate section called Studio, where you can take the mockup you’ve already created and refine it further.
You can select a design from your existing collection, or you can upload your own vector or flat clothing mockup. The app then uses AI to generate a more defined version of the garment, adding more realistic fabric texture, folds, lighting, shadows, and other small details while keeping your original design on the clothing.
The goal is to take something that clearly looks like a digital mockup and turn it into something that feels much closer to an actual finished garment.
Seeing the Garment on a Model
After generating the refined garment, there’s also an optional second step: model generation.
You can take the clothing design you just created and generate an image of a model actually wearing it. This gives you a better idea of how the garment might look when worn, rather than only seeing it as a standalone product.
You can also customize the result based on your preferences. For example, you can choose a pose that fits the look you’re going for, whether it’s a simple standing pose, something more casual, or a pose that feels closer to an editorial photoshoot. You can also set your face preferences to help create a model that matches the visual direction or overall identity you have in mind for your brand.
The idea is to give you more control over how your clothing is presented. Instead of generating a completely random model image, you can experiment with different poses and appearances until you find something that feels right for the design.
Why I Ended Up Building It Myself
Frankly, I don’t know if an app that does exactly this already exists. There are probably tools out there with similar features.
But even if there is one, I imagine most of the more advanced features would eventually sit behind a subscription. And personally, I didn’t really want to add another monthly subscription just to experiment with my own clothing ideas. So I thought, why not just build it myself?
Right now, the app is still running locally on my computer. The AI features use a relatively small amount of generation credits, and I haven’t deployed anything publicly yet.
It started as a tool I wanted for myself, but while building it, I started wondering if other designers, small clothing brands, or people who are also starting from zero might find it useful too. So I’m curious, would you guys actually use something like this? If there’s enough interest, I might clean it up, improve a few things, and deploy a public version for people to try.