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This year, the biggest conversation in fashion tech was AI by a long shot. At a pace few predicted heading into 2025, the generative artificial intelligence behind large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Perplexity have come on leaps and bounds in the last 12 months. Their newest models can understand more nuance and intent in user conversations — making them ripe tools to revolutionize shopping.
As a result, this year saw the rise of a new suite of commerce-focused features, from ChatGPT’s integrated checkout and Perplexity’s shopping experience to Google’s AI Mode shopping and virtual try-on tool. 2025 was the year the AI industry homed in on shopping as a core potential revenue driver: AI companies are racing to become consumers’ trusted one-stop shops. Tech companies also released several updates to their AI image and video-generation tools, from Google’s Veo 3 and Runway’s Gen-4, to OpenAI’s Sora 2. This gave rise to more creative experiments with AI-generated fashion imagery, especially across advertising, which were met with mixed reviews.
Fashion industry workers and consumers alike are grappling with what “real” means in the AI era, and this is influencing how brands communicate with customers. Human-led marketing has taken on even more prestige, and we saw further investment pour into creator-led shopping initiatives as well as human-led live shopping, which is finally taking off in the West.
Here’s what mattered most in fashion tech in 2025.
AIO becomes the new SEO
In April and May, both Open AI and Google launched a series of commerce-focused updates aimed at improving the shopping experience on their platforms. Then, in September, OpenAI announced an integrated checkout feature for shoppers in the US, so that consumers can complete purchases within ChatGPT without being redirected to brands’ sites. By November, ChatGPT competitor Perplexity had followed suit, debuting an in-chat shopping experience with integrated checkout powered by PayPal for its consumers in the US. The goal behind all of these updates is owning more of the online shopping journey — AI platforms want to become consumer’s first points of call from discovery to purchase.
Early data suggests consumer adoption of AI search for shopping is on the rise. On Black Friday, AI traffic to US retail sites (measured by shoppers clicking on a link within an AI chat platform) increased 805% year-on-year, according to Adobe data, as consumers turned to LLMs for product research and deal comparisons. There are also early indications that the ability to refine product searches through an intent-based conversation is upping conversion: shoppers that landed on a US retail site from an AI chat platform were 38% more likely to convert versus non-AI traffic sources, as per Adobe’s Black Friday data analysis.
This means ad agencies and marketing teams have shifted focus from SEO (search engine optimization) to what’s been coined AIO (AI optimization), and venture capitalists are backing a whole cottage industry of startups promising to increase brands’ AI search discoverability and conversions. Early best practices recommended by experts include lengthier product descriptions that provide context on how a garment can be worn, more varied product imagery and full FAQ sections for each product listed on brand sites. It wasn’t long before the e-commerce platform favored by the majority of the luxury industry, Shopify, launched a tool so that brands hosting on its platform could keep track of their AI search traffic and revenue attribution to search. Expect rival e-commerce platforms to follow suit.
Live shopping ramps up in the West
In yet another reaction to consumer scroll fatigue and AI skepticism, 2025 saw a live-shopping surge. The year kicked off with American live-stream shopping app Whatnot raising a $265 million series E funding round at a nearly $5 billion valuation, as investors backed its goal to bring together the fragmented elements of e-commerce and rebuild consumer trust. While live-stream shopping has been big in China for almost a decade, popularized by Alibaba-owned site Taobao, until 2025, the concept had been slower to take off in the West.
But as the year progressed, live streaming began playing a bigger role than ever across Western shopping habits. By November, Whatnot had raised another $225 million, soaring to a new $11.5 billion valuation. In December, Skims co-founder Kim Kardashian hosted the brand’s first-ever live-streaming event on TikTok, showcasing its collection with exclusive holiday deals and “surprise celebrity guests” in an event it dubbed Kimsmas. The event attracted over 678,000 viewers, sold 1,800 units and generated around $127,000 in GMV in under an hour, according to TikTok analytics platform FastMoss. Meanwhile, in the UK, OG live-shopping creator QVC hosted a Black Friday eve live stream that the company said was so successful that it plans to “significantly expand its investment” in live shopping on TikTok come 2026.
It’s a trend that Net-a-Porter ex fashion director Kay Barron has been across for five years. After launching and scaling Net-a-Porter’s own live-shopping feature, which brought significant return on investment (ROI) through increased sales and fewer returns, Barron announced she’d left her position at the multi-brand retailer to launch video commerce agency Vvend in November. It will act as a creative and strategic partner for luxury fashion brands increasingly wanting to sell through live video and shoppable video content. In an interview with Vogue Business, Barron summed up why live shopping is finally having its moment: “The future of commerce is about finding the people whose taste and edit is right for you, and then making it easier to shop from that,” she said.
Investors back virtual try on 2.0
Two virtual try-on apps featured on this year’s Vogue Business tech innovators list for the strides they made with the AI technology underpinning the digital twins in their apps: Alta and Doji. Alta, which launched in public beta mode in May, raised an $11 million seed round led by Uber and Poshmark backer Menlo Ventures, alongside others including Aglae Ventures, the VC firm backed by the Arnault family of LVMH. Doji, which also launched in May and is currently invite-only, raised a $14 million seed round led by OpenAI and Skims backer Thrive Capital.
Investors are backing these startups for their potential to change how we shop. Their avatars — which are created using AI diffusion models that create digital twins from a handful of selfies and full-body images users are required to upload — are more photorealistic than previous virtual try-on experiments. This has led some investors to believe they’re the future of gamified social shopping, and they’re finally meeting some luxury brands’ standards for adoption. Celebrities, influencers and stylists are buying in: in September, Doji launched its first, exclusive in-app brand partnership with Peter Do.
Both Doji and Alta, however, are competing with Big Tech companies like Google, which announced integrated virtual try-on features as part of its wider Google Shopping update in May, and unveiled experimental virtual try-on app Doppl in June that creates AI-generated videos so users can see how an outfit might feel. Some multi-brand e-tailers like Zalando also offer customers the ability to upload their body measurements and virtually try outfits on an avatar that resembles their body shape.
At the same time, the fundamental question remains: do consumers actually want to see themselves online when they’re shopping? And how do these models fit within the future of AI search shopping?
Everyone wants to power creator storefronts
All this AI innovation has sparked an affiliate marketing renaissance, as the global creator economy swells. Goldman Sachs predicts the global creator market will reach $500 billion by 2027, eclipsing projections for global luxury goods, which will sit at around $360 billion, per McKinsey.
In the meantime, a new crop of storefronts believe that in 2026, shoppers will increasingly look to their favorite human creators’ feeds for discovery, as the power of trusted human recommendation becomes a luxury in itself. They’re building their business models around this belief, creating e-commerce infrastructure that enable us to shop directly from what we see on influencers’ feeds through their own storefronts, rather than redirecting to brands’ own sites. This leaves further room for creator storytelling — and, hopefully, increased sales.
In 2025, ShopMy launched direct-to-consumer (DTC) creator storefronts on its platform, which currently provide affiliate links for creators to tag their recommendations. Vogue parent Condé Nast announced the upcoming release of its creator storefront platform Vette, while Sephora launched My Sephora Storefront, a creator-powered affiliate platform. A fresh wave of startups including District, Fflow and Vylit also entered the space to help creators build the infrastructure they need to sell products directly to shoppers.
The wearables race heats up
The wearable devices market is booming: around 49 million wearables units were sold globally in the second quarter of 2025, up 12.3% year-on-year, according to IDC data. That growth is forecast to accelerate. Grand View Research estimates that the global wearables market will reach $186 billion by 2030, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.6% from 2025 to 2030. Big Tech companies are racing to develop the first AI-powered smart wearable device that they hope could replace consumers’ reliance on their smartphones.
In 2025, Meta doubled down on its partnership with EssilorLuxottica, launching the first AI smart Ray-Ban glasses, the Meta Ray-Ban Display, with an in-lens display and wrist-worn neural band to control them, intended to entirely replace the wearer’s need to get out their phone. At the same time, it also debuted Meta Ray-Ban Gen 2, an updated version released in 2023, as well as the Oakley Meta Vanguards, the second AI camera glasses designed with the sports brand. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also continued his AI hiring drive, poaching veteran design lead Alan Dye from Apple to head a new creative studio within its Reality Labs division dedicated to developing wearable devices.
Google also intensified its efforts to compete against Meta, announcing a $150 million collaboration with Warby Parker on AI-powered smart glasses, as well as partnering with Samsung and Gentle Monster. The two companies have said they’ll launch smart glasses in 2026, with Google teasing AI features including an in-built connection to its Gemini AI assistant and an in-lens display.
Snap also released OS 2.0 in September, an updated version of its operating system for AR glasses, ahead of the launch of its first consumer smart glasses — Specs — in 2026.
It wasn’t just smart glasses that attracted millions more in investment this year. Wellness tracking ring Oura raised a $900 million series E funding round in October, bringing its valuation to $11 billion, as the company doubles down on its fastest-growing consumers: Gen Z women.
It’s a sign of things to come in 2026. Fashion has become a central part of the AI conversation this year, as tech CEOs and investors pour billions into the belief that the ultimate consumer-facing application of AI will be personal assistants housed in accessories that are discreet enough for us all to wear on our person. Or, as Miklu Silvanto, the ex-Apple design executive Oura recently hired as chief design officer, puts it: “Ultimately, the whole history of technology is that smaller objects are able to do more and more jobs — it’s a graduation.”
