People often say, “Trust the process,” but in 3D apparel design and technical workflows, such trust doesn’t always come naturally. Until teams learn to see digital tools as a welcome addition and entrust it to make real decisions, the technology won’t reach its full potential.
This was the message of “The Future of Fit Standards, Trust & Transformation,” a PI Spotlight panel that gathered industry experts from Old Navy, Target and Carter’s | OshKosh B’gosh to discuss where digital fit tools add value and fill gaps over physical fittings, and what can be done to instill more digital confidence.
3D design has the ability to unleash creativity and allow for aesthetic tweaks and iterations—move a pocket or cuff here, shift a seam or button there—but when comparing digital to physical, getting fit right still remains one of the industry’s biggest pain points.
“Placements and proportions are where teams feel comfortable, but when you start getting closer to the body, this is where that 3D trust breaks down a bit,” said moderator Phillip Sidberry, a 3D technical designer at Carter’s | OshKosh B’gosh and a PhD student at Auburn University. He added that because 3D doesn’t innately have fabric tension or seam allowances built in designers remain reliant on physical samples for now.
Such hesitation isn’t a failure of the 3D tool itself, but rather how teams still base decisionmaking on physical validation. When a designer puts a design on a physical form or live fit model, it’s easier to spot strain, tightness and drag lines. But the more teams use digital tools, test the outcomes and compare them to physical results, the more confident they grow in the technology. “Trust is built in repetition,” said Sidberry.
Highlighting this learning curve, Becky Snowden, director of technical design at Old Navy, noted that once teams are trained to interpret 3D fit and understand how “known digital fabrics” in their digital library behave virtually, they can more quickly identify and fix issues. “As you utilize those tools and standards over and over, it really starts to build up the team’s trust,” she said.
Fit has traditionally been development’s final step—the garment is either approved or rejected—but with digital, teams proactively investigate issues earlier, and adjust patterns, materials and construction before problems become expensive iterations. “Physical fit is really good at telling you what happened, while digital fit offers an understanding of why the problem happened,” said Chris Clerkin-Zenz, apparel fit systems architect and former 3D apparel engineer at Target. “The real shift isn’t fewer fittings, it’s fewer surprises.”
Digital environments also provide more consistency. Live models will always have size variations, but digital offers a consistent reference point. “Digital can help in that way to make sure everything is consistent and uniform to your brand’s standard,” said Erin Reese, former 3D technical designer at Carter’s | OshKosh B’gosh.
Fabric behavior is a main challenge when it comes to confidence in digital tools. While current digital systems measure properties like weight, thickness and bend, they often struggle to fully replicate the behavior of stretch fabrics—rayons, modals or blends with elastane or complex recovery.
As a result, the 3D Retail Coalition (3DRC), an industry non-profit to accelerate adoption of 3D technology in fashion, apparel, footwear and retail—aligned on five key parameters that the industry should use for measuring fabric physics. These include bend, elongation, thickness, weight and bias, but Michelle Greenhouse, senior 3D material artist at Target and chair of 3DRC, suggests they also add stretch and recovery, two key elements of knits. “Once this is established, it will unlock all kinds of different things, such as building out your own digital tolerance for your brand and how that can translate to the garment.”
Interpretation and Adoption Challenges
Digital knowledge and training is critical, because if teams don’t understand how fabrics behave in the real world, they won’t be able to identify discrepancies. Teams need to ask the right questions: is the difference coming from the avatar not matching the fit model, the fabric behavior, the digital construction or even the simulation settings?
While digital-physical discrepancies should be analyzed rather than dismissed, digital is often judged too harshly, agree experts. For example, when something is blown up on the screen, the problem can seem huge, while in reality, it would blend into the fabric’s color or pile and not be seen with the naked eye.
Even with the right setup, interpretation remains a challenge. Understanding fit in a digital space takes practice, comparison and ongoing adjustment. Snowden described this as “training the eye,” where repeated comparisons between digital and physical garments help teams understand not just what looks different, but why. “You’re asking people to work differently, and if they don’t know why and what’s in it for them, it’s going to break down.”
Adoption of the technology into workflows is the final challenge. Simply layering 3D tools on top of existing processes without changing how decisions are made often creates more friction than value, said Clerkin-Zenz. “3D needs to be able to solve a problem, and that starts with defining what that problem is. It can’t be just an iteration tool, or teams will just fall back on familiar methods.”
