Fashion’s pandemic-era tech infatuation has passed, and consumers and companies are once again ready for human touch. As generative artificial intelligence is surging and brand budgets are shrinking, this sets up a poignant tension between the automated and the authentic in 2025.
Fashion-tech projects will prioritise business basics, chasing tools that save time and money: think personalisation at scale, automated curation and digital shortcuts to market physical goods. Consumers will respond to tech that blends in, with analogue and retro-seeming products and experiences enjoying more screen time. Both will continue to push back on digital-only products and experiences, instead preferring a merger of the digital and physical.
The twist is that big tech companies stand to gain as brands cut startup-driven pilots that are deemed more fantastical or risky.
Humanity in AI?
Generative AI has been praised for its human-seeming responses to organic queries, leading to a host of tools that aim to mimic the role of the well-informed personal sales associate to suggest products and pairings. In 2025, expect brands to improve upon early tests, using tech from giants such as OpenAI, Salesforce, Shopify, and Google — or a host of startups — specifically tailored for fashion, beauty and retail.
Stitch Fix chief product and technology officer Tony Bacos predicts that generative AI will evolve from “a novelty and curiosity into use-cases that are more immediately impactful and helpful” to both consumers and businesses. Such uses include product visualisation and virtual try-on, smarter large language models for customer service and other AI tools that “help consumers make sense of overwhelming amounts of information without having to slog through the noise”.
Helping people find something to buy will be a top priority for existing retailers, big tech companies and new startups. All eyes will be on new startup Daydream, designed to bring the best of generative AI searches to fashion.
“The hype cycle of generative AI experimentation is coming to an end, as enterprises now expect clear, measurable ROI from their generative AI investments,” says Peter Curran, GM of commerce at Coveo, which makes AI-informed search-engine tech. “In 2025, we’ll see a decisive shift from pilot projects to full-scale generative AI deployments, with a focus on practical applications that drive real business outcomes.” He adds that consumers will expect more “human-like” shopping experiences and that 2025 will see a flood of chatbots, voice assistants and other AI-informed recommendations personalised to individual shoppers.
Generative AI might also enable more advanced virtual try-on options via in-store smart mirrors or e-commerce, building on early examples from Google and Bods that overlay digital product renders on customer-selected avatars.
More experimental brands might dabble in co-creation, allowing customers to personalise and visualise products before they go into production (already something that Victoria’s Secret-owned intimates brand Adore Me is planning to scale up).
While these tools aim to make shopping easier, especially for retailers with large assortments, customers will want to know where AI stops and human associates begin. Shoppers, accustomed to familiar e-commerce grids and search engine-optimised prompts, will invariably struggle through a learning curve, with some perhaps craving the more familiar self-guided scrolling experience or — in the most luxurious settings — true, human-guided shopping. “For the masses, it’s fun and lightly functional at best, and inaccurate and generally unreliable at its worst,” says Matt Maher, founder and CEO of fashion-tech consultancy M7 Innovations. “But all of big tech is racing toward the same end goal: being your go-to AI assistant — your virtual concierge.”
Many traditionally high-touch brands, perhaps taking a cue from Estée Lauder Companies and LVMH, will continue to prioritise AI behind the scenes to, for example, help predict purchase behaviour, prototype new styles and create marketing materials.
Real-world wearables
The face-off between smart glasses and mixed reality headsets in 2024 suggested that ‘in real life’ moments won compared to virtual experiences. Ray-Ban Meta smartglasses took off more quickly than expected, while Apple’s VisionPro — although it impressed early adopters in quality — missed expectations on demand. Expect more styles and uses of wearables and smart glasses from Meta and others as mainstream consumers capture content from the world around them and become more accustomed to interacting with sentient digital assistants. This shift to what is called “ambient computing” will be “both extraordinary and inconspicuous”, Maher says.
Digital fashion, digital product passports and NFTs will see innovation anchored in the physical. Already, Roblox has linked physical e-commerce sales with its metaverse experiences, and digital fashion startup Syky is seeing success shepherding physical designers into hybrid products that are authenticated on the blockchain.
Gaming and virtual worlds will be tied to physical goods, either through e-commerce sales or loyalty rewards programmes, says Neha Singh, founder and CEO of experiential e-commerce platform Obsess.
“Roblox will be the largest platform for immersive commerce growth in 2025. The introduction of Shopify’s integration allows brands to achieve direct sales ROI from the 90 million daily active users on Roblox,” says Singh. AI will affect this too, she adds, as AI-generated spaces make it easier and faster for brands to build virtual worlds. “This will eliminate the traditional multi-month 3D design process, significantly lowering barriers to entry.”
One point of pause, though, from Dmytro Kornilov, co-founder and CEO of AR tech company Ffface.me: games need to be treated as a new social network, but many brands don’t have a dedicated game integration team in place. “You need to consider games as social networks and go all in,” he says.
Connected products are no longer in the pilot stage. Modern consumers now expect clarity on product information — particularly when it comes to luxury, says Colby Mugrabi, founder and CEO of Web3 fashion brand Mmerch. She adds that it’s the industry’s job to respond to those expectations in compelling ways that expand the value and use of physical products.
The Aura Blockchain Consortium is encouraging top luxury brands to maximise their investments in digital identities to layer on authentication loyalty, storytelling, circularity and other customer-friendly perks that strengthen trust between customers and brands, says Aura Blockchain Consortium CEO Romain Carrere. “Value-creation for the customer is central to technology adoption for brands in 2025. To maintain consumer trust in times of mounting expectation and pressure, brands must also continue to put customers at the centre of their strategic decision-making.” As the 2027 deadline for digital product passports draws closer, this will bubble higher on the priority list for executives.
Traceability systems that go beyond compliance and services including repairability, recyclability and upcycling will be a priority, says María Fernanda Hernández Franco, sustainability director at Temera, which works with Aura and major luxury brands. These add “the chance for actionable insights and additional benefits to enhance customer trust and operational efficiency”, she adds.
A bigger platform for big tech
The past few years have been complicated for big tech companies. There have been serious allegations that companies including Google, Amazon and Meta provide too much to too many and thus stifle competition from startups; TikTok, meanwhile, is facing a ban in the US over concerns about its China-based parent company that could go into effect as soon as this month.
Overall, the tides might be turning in their favour: big tech has been courting President-elect Donald Trump, who is seen as more amenable to big business, and brands — desperate to create low-risk efficiencies — might increasingly depend on their growing suites of services. Fashion conglomerates win from scale, too. Although the Tapestry-Capri deal failed, Saks Global is leaning on new investors Amazon and Salesforce to put on a strong global front.
There’s tension here, too, between the urge toward authenticity and the excitement of AI-generated content — especially on social media. At the same time that Australia is banning social media for young people, California is considering “black box” warning labels and Facebook is testing a “no edit” tag on images, Instagram is helping people create AI-created backgrounds and “test” how popular their Reels will be.
Maher predicts that eventually, there will be more awareness and guardrails on constant smartphone use, which he goes so far as to call an “addiction” — but he doesn’t see that until 2030.
For now, big tech — it seems — is a small price to pay for top billing.
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