This episode delves into the significant advancements in fashion tech in 2025, focusing on AI, digital fashion, and virtual try-on technology.

With guest speaker Matt Astarita of Browzwear and host Peter Jeun Ho Tsang, they explore the acquisition of La La Land, the CaaStle fraud case, investor due diligence, the future of virtual try-on technology, and the evolution of digital fashion and product creation. The year 2025 marked a shift towards ecosystem integration and collaboration among fashion tech vendors.

Takeaways

• Fashion tech in 2025 saw significant advancements in AI, digital fashion, and virtual try-on technology.
• The year 2025 marked a shift towards ecosystem integration and collaboration among fashion tech vendors.

Chapters

• 00:00 Fashion Tech Advancements in 2025
• 05:17 Acquisition of La La Land and AI Integration
• 12:31 The Role of AI in Styling and Designing Outfits
• 17:56 Investor Due Diligence in Fashion Tech
• 27:48 Digital Fashion and Product Creation in 2025

Connect with Matt on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/matt-astarita-07aa24a7/

Find out about Browzwear: browzwear.com/

Dorcas Payne, a creative business consultant, shares her insights on building successful businesses in niche fashion markets. She emphasizes the critical role of operations and supply chain management in creative entrepreneurship, and the resilience needed to scale. For her, it’s crucial for emerging fashion talent to continuously listen to the feedback loop and use data to grow. Dorcas is on a mission to make supply chains sexy again, showing how strategic operations, thoughtful execution, and community-driven collaboration are just as exciting and essential as the designs on the runway.

The Backbone of Creative Business- in this episode, we discuss why:
• Operations matter – supply chain and operational strategy are the foundations of growth in the fashion industry.
• Data is king – understanding customer behavior through feedback loops drives better decisions.
• Scale down, execute excellence – resilience comes from doing fewer things at a higher standard.
• Representation in entrepreneurship – systemic challenges for global ethnic majority founders demand allyship and collaboration.

Connect with Dorcas: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dorcas-payne/

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The show is recorded from Beyond Form, a fashion tech innovation platform. We build, invest, and educate fashion tech entrepreneurs and startups. We’d love to hear your feedback, so let us know if you’d like to hear a certain topic. Email us at podcast@beyondform.io. If you’re an entrepreneur or fashion tech startup looking for studio support, check out our website: beyondform.io

As we close out 2024, this year's final episode is joined by Yoobin Jung, a VC at Plug and Play, where she along with our host Peter break down the fashion tech booms and busts that happened throughout the year. They discuss:

• AI's transformative impact on fashion design: Generative design tools are accelerating prototyping and reshaping brand identities, but raise ethical concerns about potentially replacing junior designers.

• The sustainability challenge: AI could help align production with demand, potentially addressing the persistent issue of overproduction in the fashion industry.

• Luxury brands and AI adoption: High-end fashion houses are cautiously approaching AI, grappling with complexities of clothing structures and concerns about AI-driven overconsumption.

• Recommendation algorithms: Effectiveness varies between Europe and South Korea, prompting questions about enhancing consumer experiences versus fuelling overconsumption.

• Regulatory landscape: EU policies like Extended Producer Responsibility aim to promote circularity, yet industry readiness is questionable, as evidenced by Renewcell's bankruptcy.

• Future of luxury e-commerce: The resale market is gaining prominence, with potential lessons from South Korea's Kakao platform on integrating digital and physical retail experiences.

Contact Yoobin on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/yoobinjung

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The show is recorded from Beyond Form, a fashion tech innovation platform. We build, invest, and educate fashion tech entrepreneurs and startups. We’d love to hear your feedback, so let us know if you’d like to hear a certain topic. Email us at podcast@beyondform.io. If you’re an entrepreneur or fashion tech startup looking for studio support, check out our website: beyondform.io

We wrap up our 'Build It' podcast series with a reflective finale. Host Peter Jeun Ho Tsang tell us his top 5 key takeaways from navigating business growth, how to get through challenging times as a fashion tech startup, through to tech and humans coming together. This episode highlights the passionate voices featured throughout the series and how the call for a strategic collaboration between brands, investors, and innovators to not only sustain emerging technologies but to also foster their growth.

Connect with Peter on LinkedIn.

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The show is recorded from Beyond Form, a fashion tech innovation platform. We build, invest, and educate fashion tech entrepreneurs and startups. We’d love to hear your feedback, so let us know if you’d like to hear a certain topic. Email us at podcast@beyondform.io. If you’re an entrepreneur or fashion tech startup looking for studio support, check out our website: beyondform.io

Dr. Huamin Wang's Research World
Picture the future of fashion on your screens, where virtual garments behave just like the real ones, thanks to the power of 3D simulation and GPU computing. That's the intriguing world we're exploring with Dr. Huamin Wang, Chief Scientist at Style3D, a pioneer in the digital fashion software space. We traverse through a captivating conversation, discussing the technology shaping the industry, the landscape of the global fashion design software market, and how Huamin's journey of cutting-edge research has brought him to the forefront of digital fashion.

Style3D's Next Technical Advancements in Digital Fashion
Ever wondered how artificial intelligence could revolutionize the digital fashion industry? With Huamin we take a closer look at the precision required to translate real fabrics into digital ones, how GPUs are improving accuracy and speed in the creation of digital fashion 3D assets, and the role of motion capture and simulation algorithms for the human body to effectively render in the digital realm.

Join us on this journey as we explore the path towards a more visually realistic and beautiful digital fashion landscape.

Find out more about Style3D: linctex.com
Visit the Style3D Linkedin Page

This episode has been created in paid partnership with Style3D.

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The show is recorded from Beyond Form, a fashion tech innovation platform. We build, invest, and educate fashion tech entrepreneurs and startups. We’d love to hear your feedback, so let us know if you’d like to hear a certain topic. Email us at podcast@beyondform.io. If you’re an entrepreneur or fashion tech startup looking for studio support, check out our website: beyondform.io

Grappling Business as a Fashion Designer?
As a creative, focusing on business issues can be daunting. This is how our guest speaker, Beatrice Newman, felt when her father urged her to take a business course after getting her degree in fashion design. However, she quickly learned that business and fashion are intertwined and gaining business skills as a designer can make or break a brand. Using her love for heritage techniques and crochet, she has successfully built her brand Korlekie to what it is today, being featured in numerous publications and dressing some of the biggest celebs in the world.

Educating Future Fashion Entrepreneurs
But she still had an itch to make a contribution to the fashion industry in a different way. Having grown in both business and fashion, she saw the vision of a course designed by a creative for creatives that took all of the things she learned from both school and entrepreneurship. In this episode we will take an in depth look at the things Beatrice has learned in her 10 plus years of entrepreneurship, and how that has helped her build her second venture, MODE, an online education platform.

To learn more about MODE & sign up for your first course visit the MODE website.
Get in contact with Beatrice: https://www.linkedin.com/in/korlekie

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The show is recorded from Beyond Form, a fashion tech innovation platform. We build, invest, and educate fashion tech entrepreneurs and startups. We’d love to hear your feedback, so let us know if you’d like to hear a certain topic. Email us at podcast@beyondform.io. If you’re an entrepreneur or fashion tech startup looking for studio support, check out our website: beyondform.io

MODE Pivots into Beyond Form Education:
Beatrice Newman, the creative force behind online fashion education platform Mode, chats in this episode what it means to pivot a fashion business. Exclusively on today's episode she reveals the launch of Beyond Form Education, a groundbreaking initiative bridging the gap between academia and the fashion industry.

Data-Driven Pivoting in the Fashion Industry:
We discuss how data-driven decisions and user feedback are revolutionising fashion education in a post-pandemic world. As the desire for in-person experiences resurges, Peter and Beatrice share insights on creating a global learning canvas that spans entrepreneurship, innovation, technology, and design.

Episode highlights:

• The power of adaptability in reshaping fashion education.
• Leveraging data and feedback for pivotal business decisions.
• Bridging the academia-industry gap in the fashion world.
• The importance of a supportive team and continuous learning.
• Exploring diverse opportunities beyond traditional fashion roles.

Learn about Beyond Form Education: beyondform.io/education
Connect with Beatrice: linkedin.com/in/korlekie

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The show is recorded from Beyond Form, a fashion tech innovation platform. We build, invest, and educate fashion tech entrepreneurs and startups. We’d love to hear your feedback, so let us know if you’d like to hear a certain topic. Email us at podcast@beyondform.io. If you’re an entrepreneur or fashion tech startup looking for studio support, check out our website: beyondform.io

Deciding When To Leave Your Regular Job & Start Your Own Venture
How do you know when the right time to leave is? Arie Katz has had to ask himself that question multiple times along his entrepreneurial journey. From making the decision to leave one start up to begin his own, to deciding when to part ways with multiple founders, his journey has been full of questions and taking risks to answer them. In this episode, we sit down with Arie and break down these tough decisions he’s made and how exactly he came to the conclusions that led him to continue towards developing his business, RoundRack.

Pushing Through & Developing Round Rack
Arie's journey is a testament to resilience and adaptability. Especially when your co-founding partners are not the people that you thought would be able to get the startup to the next stage. Arie unravels tough decisions that have forced him to pivot, realign, and evolve his business strategy, including parting ways with this co-founding team. Although now a solopreneur, Arie gives insights as to how he's making an impact with RoundRack, next generation materials, and sustainable fashion.

To learn more and get in touch with RoundRack visit their website.
Connect with Arie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ariekatz

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The show is recorded from Beyond Form, a fashion tech innovation platform. We build, invest, and educate fashion tech entrepreneurs and startups. We’d love to hear your feedback, so let us know if you’d like to hear a certain topic. Email us at podcast@beyondform.io. If you’re an entrepreneur or fashion tech startup looking for studio support, check out our website: beyondform.io