The collection is being tested before the fabric exists
the collection is being tested before the fabric exists: over 45 percent of global apparel brands now use ai design tools daily, norma kamali trained a model on 57 years of her own archives, and asics generates shoe proposals from 3d gait scans ready for production. ai demand forecasts hit above 90 percent accuracy and cut overproduction.
the runway is becoming the training set.
Context
Business of Fashion reported in Oct 2024 that Norma Kamali's custom generative AI tool, built by Maison Meta, was trained exclusively on her past work. MIT News (Apr 22, 2025) describes her NK Custom AI archive spanning more than five decades.
ASICS announced on Jun 18, 2026 an AI footwear design and manufacturing simulation project with RebuilderAI at VivaTech.
Kamali's model trained on her own archive matches the sources, which say five decades, not a specific 57 years. The 45 percent of global apparel brands using AI design tools daily, ASICS proposals from 3D gait scans, and 90 percent forecast accuracy cutting overproduction were not seen in the sources read, so unsupported here, not refuted.
Related work
Watch next
- Find the survey behind the share of brands using AI design tools.
Sources
- MIT News, Apr 22, 2025news.mit.edu
- Business of Fashion, Oct 2, 2024businessoffashion.com
- ASICS, Jun 18, 2026corp.asics.com
Provenance
The note above is reproduced unedited from the original post, first published on Threads on 2 October 2026 at 18:17 IST. Sources are the papers and datasets the note draws on.
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