How AI Agents Will Transform
Fashion Marketing

AI will impact every industry, and the fashion industry is no exception. However, people in fashion are typically more focused on beauty and design than technology. That's why I decided to write this essay and explore with you how AI agents are influencing this industry. This analysis will help clothing brand owners and fashion marketing teams understand AI trends in the fashion industry. I'll also create a step-by-step roadmap for implementing AI agents in your clothing brand.

There's a lot of discussion about AI agents, but non-technical people often don't understand what they are. Let me explain in simple terms.

An AI agent is like a smart intern who never sleeps. It's an intelligent program (software) that can automate routine tasks and workflows.

Before the AI era, this was called automation, but now it's a significant step forward because AI makes these systems much smarter.

For example, when a customer sends an email about product delivery, a human previously had to read the email, copy the order ID, open the delivery management system, find the order status, and send a response email. This repetitive, boring task is something nobody likes doing but has to be done.

From a technical perspective, an AI agent gets data from one ecosystem (email support), searches for data in another ecosystem (delivery management system), and takes action (sends an email using an LLM model).

Before AI, resolving this problem without human intervention was impossible. Now AI agents can handle it automatically because they've become intelligent.

When you hear about new technology, you might think it can automate everything.

Sellers of AI tools often claim this too.

But your goal as an expert adopting AI is to figure out what AI agents can really do—and what they can't.

In this essay, I'll focus only on AI agents, not AI in general.

When writing this essay, I always ask myself questions like: "Anton, if you were the chief of AI in a fashion brand, what would you do?"

In any consumer product, marketing is key. With good marketing and high conversion rates, you have bigger margins.

You can invest more in ads and outpace your competitors. That's why my view will focus first on marketing and sales processes.

The first thing I would do is split the information from the noise.

AI agents can perfectly distinguish between noise and valuable information.
Comments like "Good shoes, I like it" are noise.Comments like "Do you have the same, but in black, size 43?" or "Do you ship products to my city?" are information.

That's what I would do first. I call it Customer Service AI Agents.

The simplest use case you can implement is a smart chatbot for your brand's Instagram and TikTok accounts that handles customer support.

The interesting thing is that ALL brands think about getting more traffic without exception. This is obvious—more traffic and subscribers mean more revenue. But sometimes they simply need to answer customers on social media.

At Apiway, we researched response rates by acting as secret shoppers, asking about prices and product details in Instagram DMs.

We were shocked! Only 40% of brands responded, and only 20% of those responded within a few hours. Here's a spreadsheet with our findings (brand names hidden for privacy).

Instagram DM AI agents can answer questions about sizes, fabrics, product availability, delivery, returns, and more. This use case is the simplest to implement for brands. It can take 1-2 days to set up this kind of agent if the brand has complete product information.

There are plenty of tools to help brands answer comments on social media and engage communities. The problem is that some brands receive so many comments that they need entire teams to entertain followers. This is expensive, which is why we see many unanswered comments, even important ones.

With AI, this can be done easily and cost-effectively. AI can detect comments I've labeled as "about money and customer care" and respond quickly.

For example, if followers ask in comments about delivery, price, or fabric details, AI can start a conversation like "I've sent you details in DM." For comments like "Nice dress," AI will simply respond "Thanks."

We can see how well Zara performs. They have 60M followers and check every comment. I believe this is still done by humans but could be completely replaced by AI.

Before AI, only big brands like Zara could afford this quality of support, but now every Instagram shop can enable AI agent mode with a few clicks.

AI agents can categorize requests and send only genuine questions to humans, filtering out noise.

Implementing just these two features will increase sales and save your human support team time.

The most obvious AI implementation in fashion is virtual try-on technology.

When Google launched Virtual Try-On (video), it was only a matter of time before it became widely used. Google has also introduced tools like Doppl for virtual try-on experiences. However, all of this happens in Google's ecosystem when people use Google Shopping. The problem is that users have to download different apps and constantly take screenshots of garments—it takes a lot of effort.

Brands want to control this process.

At Apiway, we believe the real game with Virtual Try-On will be on Instagram, TikTok, and WhatsApp—not on websites or separate apps.

That's why we implemented AI virtual try-on technology in conversational AI agents for Instagram DMs.

The idea is that when users comment with keywords on specific posts featuring garments, or when users see ads on Instagram and after clicking get into a DMs funnel, the AI agent starts a conversation, sends a link, and offers virtual try-on.

If we consider how users try on clothes offline, they usually take 5-10 items to their dressing room. In Instagram DMs, it will be similar—your AI assistant will function like an offline shopping assistant, with the try-on process happening in Instagram DMs instead of physical dressing rooms.

AI agents can remember previous chats with users, their sizes, and other details. It's like an "Outfit matcher"—users upload photos of dresses and AI suggests matching accessories from your store.

The offline fitting room is moving to Instagram/TikTok/WhatsApp conversations.
You can try it here and AI will 'dress' you.

AI Try-On can be a perfect lead magnet for fashion brands. When users start conversations on Instagram or TikTok, AI agents can collect email addresses and phone numbers for future email marketing and SMS campaigns.

Of course, users won't provide their contact information for free—you need to offer something valuable in exchange. Virtual try-on is the perfect incentive.

Here's how it works:

1. A user starts a conversation and uploads their photo
2. The AI agent processes the image and sends back a preview (blurred version)
3. To unlock the full high-resolution virtual try-on result, users provide their email or phone number
4. The AI agent immediately delivers the complete virtual try-on image
5. Contact information is automatically synced to your CRM system or email marketing platform

This creates a win-win exchange: users receive personalized, shareable content while brands build their contact database with engaged prospects.

This approach is far more effective than traditional lead capture methods. Many marketers still rely on website pop-ups with generic offers like "Sign up and get 20% discount"—a strategy that feels outdated and intrusive. People are fatigued by these tactics.

In the AI era, consumers are willing to exchange their contact information for genuine personalized value. A custom virtual try-on image or video of themselves wearing your products is far more compelling than a standard discount code everyone receives.

Think of this as your brand's personal ChatGPT, but one that's exclusively trained on your products, brand voice, and customer preferences. Major retailers like Zalando have already proven the effectiveness of this approach, reporting impressive results:

• 23% increase in product clicks
• 40%+ increase in products added to wishlists
• Successful expansion to 25 markets with localized languages

Zalando used the existing ChatGPT model but customized it for their specific needs—they didn't build their own AI from scratch. Here's how I think about it: general AI models like ChatGPT are like elite athletes with perfect physical conditioning—they can run, jump, and perform basic exercises better than anyone. But they can't play professional basketball or tennis without specialized training. When you provide ChatGPT with your product catalog, brand guidelines, and customer data, you're teaching that existing athlete to excel at your particular "sport."

A shopping virtual assistant doesn't just answer questions—it understands your brand's nuances:

• Which fabrics work best for different body types
• How your sizing runs compared to competitors
• Which accessories complement specific items
• Your return policy details and shipping options
• Seasonal availability and upcoming collections

The beauty of this system is its versatility. The same AI brain can operate across multiple touchpoints:

• Instagram and TikTok DMs for social commerce
• Website chat for traditional e-commerce
• Email support for detailed inquiries
• WhatsApp for international customers

The backend intelligence remains consistent—only the interface changes.

Based on my research into fashion customer inquiries, here's what your AI assistant will handle most frequently:

Modern shopping assistants go far beyond answering questions. They can:

• Suggest complete outfits based on one item a customer likes
• Remember previous conversations and preferences
• Recommend similar items when something is out of stock
• Provide styling advice based on occasion, season, or personal taste
• Upsell and cross-sell naturally within the conversation

This isn't about replacing human customer service—it's about creating a 24/7 brand expert that can handle routine inquiries while escalating complex issues to human agents. The result is faster response times, more consistent brand messaging, and the ability to serve customers across time zones without increasing staff costs

All e-commerce businesses struggle with inventory checking and stopping sales of finished products.

This is manageable on websites, but when selling garments on Instagram, you can easily spend 20 minutes discussing items that are no longer available.

AI agents can easily help with this process. For questions like "Is it available?" AI agents can send requests to your inventory software and automatically answer. This can save hundreds of hours.

The same works for sizing questions.

Every marketer understands the value of personalization. But let's be honest—is mentioning a subscriber's name in emails actual personalization? Of course not.
I think personalization is when users see different content.

Imagine you're a fashion brand creating a new collection. You hire models to wear the garments, create photoshoots, and market this content. That's how it works now.

In the future, users will provide their photos and body parameters once, and AI will create a full collection with photos where the user appears wearing these garments.

Imagine receiving an email with 20 photos of yourself wearing clothes—it will be like a personal catalog with yourself wearing the new collection.

The next step will be users receiving 60-second videos of themselves walking down the street in different clothes.

What I mean is that AI will generate entire collection catalogs for individuals. It will be like a personal shopping assistant creating "Pinterest-style boards," but instead of random images, it will be AI-generated images with the customer's face wearing the brand's clothes.

Before, brands hired photo studios and models for photoshoots and sent them in mass emails.

In the future, brands will capture user photos once, and AI will send personalized email campaigns with AI-generated images where customers see themselves in the brand's clothes.

Influencer marketing is a key driver in the fashion and apparel industry. But we all know that finding good influencers isn't easy. The biggest pain point is that they often ghost you. There's an entire process where brands hire influencer marketing agencies and pay 20% of their ad budget to these agencies.

But what if brands could work with influencers who already like the brand?

Imagine a brand needs influencers with specific demographics, 100K subscribers, and good engagement.

The brand makes a post, and an influencer with 100k followers comments that they like the dress. The AI agent automatically checks the influencer's profile and engagement, and if it fits the brand's requirements, sends a message with a collaboration offer or adds their data to a spreadsheet with other potential influencers.

AI agents can say: "We find you interesting for collaboration with [Brand name]. Please submit a form where you can provide insights about story views and engagement. If our marketing team is interested, we'll contact you."

With this AI agent feature, brands don't need to spend 20% of their budget on agencies to find influencers.

The same can work with micro-influencers who have 1-10K followers.

Dealing with them manually would take enormous time. Checking costs would be like gifting or $50-100—a management nightmare. But AI can handle it.

The risk at these amounts is minimal. Imagine if AI finds 1000 micro-influencers, makes deals with them on gifting terms, asks for delivery addresses, and then checks if they post and mention your brand. All of this can be done automatically by AI agents.

The diamonds are already near you, in your following list. You just don't see them.

Every brand wants to be mentioned in Instagram stories by their users, but it's not easy to achieve because people want to see value for their mentions—mentioning in social media is modern currency.

Asking customers to mention the brand and checking these mentions takes a lot of effort, but with AI agents, it becomes simple.

For example, a user starts a conversation in Instagram DMs and gets a virtual try-on that they can post on Instagram.

The AI agent can offer a discount if the user posts this AI-generated try-on and mentions the brand's Instagram.

Instagram's API allows detection and response to mentions.

The automation could work like this: "When the user mentions the brand within one hour after getting the try-on, the AI agent generates a unique promo code 'UserName190' and sends it to the user."

The agent explains that the discount works for only a few hours, pushing the user to buy immediately while encouraging them to share virtual content on social media and mention the brand.

One of my most creative ideas when I started my startup was creating a tool that allows followers of specific pages to connect with each other. One of the biggest problems on Instagram is that followers can't communicate with each other—they're in the shadows.

In today's world, it's very important to build a community around your brand, and AI agents can help.

Here's an example: Imagine Nike posts on Instagram with the offer "Type 'run' in the comments if you want to find a running buddy in your city."

When people start commenting, the AI agent begins conversations in DMs, asks them to upload photos, tell a bit about themselves, which city they live in, etc.

After that, the AI agent analyzes other people who sent DMs and matches them. It's like Tinder inside brand Instagram DMs.

It sounds crazy, but imagine if someone finds their soulmate in their DMs. That couple will talk about Nike for the rest of their lives.

Different brands can create viral collaborations. Imagine Harley Davidson creating a collaboration with Agent Provocateur with the offer, "Here's a place where tough guys hang out with attractive women."

It sounds funny, but it could be extremely viral. People like to hang out on social media and sometimes buy something from those who entertain them.

AI tools are very new and there's a lot of noise around them. Especially if you're not a developer, it's hard to figure out what's happening.

Let's dive in.

The first illusion is "AI agents replace everything"—this is absolutely false. AI agents will replace monotonous jobs like checking comments or answering questions like "Do you deliver to my city?" These processes will be 100% automated.

Does this mean AI will replace your support team? No. But there won't be support specialists. There will be operators who manage AI agents and teach them how to do the job better. If you have 5 support specialists, in the next 2 years it will be one who does the job.

If you have a small brand and your social media specialist spends a couple of hours per day checking DMs and comments, in the near future they'll spend 10 minutes per day just making notes for the AI agent on how to do the job better.

The second illusion is "ChatGPT will do everything; I don't need other tools anymore."

I also thought like this when I first saw it. But I started to realize there will be many tools that work based on ChatGPT and focus on one core use case.

Many people think they can just connect ChatGPT to their email, Instagram, or support system and AI will do the job.

It will work, but won't resolve problems effectively. In this case, if a customer texts your Instagram with questions, basic ChatGPT integration won't have the specialized knowledge and context needed for your specific brand and products.

Fashion is about emotion, not logic. You can be super effective, but if you can't spread emotions, you'll lose in this industry. That's why in the first step I always ask: "What do I need to do to get people talking about my brand?"

That's why we first implement AI Virtual Try-On with images and videos.

It's about the wow effect. In the next few years, people will be surprised to see themselves in AI images and videos where they can see themselves walking down the street in clothes they're interested in.

By 2030, this won't be surprising—it will be an industry standard.

People can share these videos and images with friends and post on Instagram. It can go viral. That's actually what all brands want—to create user-generated viral content.

Nobody will be surprised if you answer comments quickly because that's what customers expect from you. But they don't expect you to create videos with them.

All things that people don't expect from brands become viral.

Key metrics are increasing conversion rates in sales and getting mentions from customers in their Instagram stories.

P.S. You can change step 1 to step 3. It depends on what you're focusing on. If you're a small brand, focus on try-on because it will drive sales. If you're a big brand like Zara, focus on Step 2 and implement Virtual Try-On in the second stage.

From my experience, the average open rate in the clothing industry is 10-15%. This is actually better than average Instagram story reach. So you need to implement email list building into your sales funnel. You can provide Virtual Try-On results after users send their email in DMs.

So every AI Try-On generation will give you an email address you can reach anytime. It's a good deal for users to exchange email addresses for AI try-on generation.

When you've implemented the wow effect with AI Virtual Try-On, you can move to more common but important use cases. I call it "always online," where customers can get smart answers immediately across all channels.

And it won't be a stupid chatbot from 2019. It will be a smart AI agent that really sounds human.

What I see in the industry is that brands provide support on websites. This is something from 2010. Modern women hate email conversations and prefer chatting on Instagram DMs.

You need an FAQ knowledge base about EACH product and "train" your agent to answer. In most cases, these questions are about delivery, returns, refunds, sizes, and fabric details.

When questions are complex, the AI agent will notify human operators to resolve problems.

Key metrics are that all DM requests are answered and you spend half the time on support teams.

Next, I recommend implementing auto-comments. This allows people to feel special. When a beloved brand likes your comment, you feel seen. It builds better bonds.

AI agents reply to emotional comments with emojis. Actually, this is what we see on a small scale—brands and influencers commenting on the first 10 comments with emojis, but not all comments.

Before AI, it was impossible to answer everyone, but today it's very easy.

AI agents can notify support teams about important comments when customers are angry.

AI agents can detect harassment and provocative comments and delete them. For example, delete or not answer political comments.

Modern LLM models that AI agents use allow them to filter different types of comments and not reply to those that could damage the brand.

AI agents can be "community managers".

Next, you can implement technology that tracks mentions of your brand in stories or posts. You can motivate people to do this by providing discounts. For example, a customer starts a Virtual Try-On process in Instagram DMs, provides their email when you send try-on generation, and at that moment the AI agent can say, "If you post this try-on generation on your Instagram account, I'll provide a 10% discount in the next 5 hours."

The user makes a post and mentions your brand. Using tools like Apiway, the AI agent automatically detects mentions and sends discount messages.
With this feature, you can create a flywheel for user-generated content for your brand.

The next thing I would recommend is building a list of potential influencers from your followers.

Just implement this agent mode and AI will do the job. After some time, you'll see a list of people ready to collaborate with you. No need to spend time negotiating with influencers. The diamonds are already in your following list—you just need to find them.

The fashion industry stands at a turning point. While we've always been driven by emotion, aesthetics, and human connection, AI agents don't replace these fundamentals—they amplify them.

The brands that will dominate in the next decade aren't necessarily those with the biggest budgets or the most followers. They're the ones that will create deeper, more personalized connections with their customers through intelligent automation. They're the brands that will be available 24/7, speak every customer's language, and make each person feel like the main character in their own fashion story.

The technology exists today. The question isn't whether AI agents will transform fashion marketing—it's whether you'll be leading this transformation or watching your competitors do it first.

Start small, think big, and remember: in a world where everyone can access the same AI tools, your competitive advantage will come from how creatively and strategically you implement them. The diamonds are already in your following list. The customers are already in your DMs. The future is already here.

It's time to embrace it.