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29/07/26
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Welcome back to The Fashion Toolbox Podcast. I’m Laura, founder of Fashion Toolbox, and this is where I have practical, honest conversations about digital fashion, 3D, AI and the skills actually shaping this industry, without the fluff.
In this episode, I’m talking through what I’d genuinely focus on if I wanted my CLO3D skills to hold up over the next few years, using my own (fairly chaotic) route into the software as the starting point. If you’re learning CLO3D right now and feel like you’re permanently one tutorial behind everyone else, this one’s for you.
Listen to the full episode on Spotify, or read along below.
Here’s the uncomfortable bit. You can get very good at making CLO3D look impressive without becoming particularly useful in a product development workflow.
A beautiful render with the seam lengths wrong. An eye-catching animation where the fabric behaviour is nothing like the real thing. A tutorial followed perfectly, with no idea what to check when your own garment twists, collapses, or flies across the screen for no obvious reason.
As CLO gets faster, more automated, and more connected, I think that gap only gets bigger. Not the gap between people who know the software and people who don’t. The gap between people who know CLO and people who know the garment.
If you’re learning CLO3D in 2026, you’ve got more tutorials, resources, and shortcuts available to you than ever before. You’ve also got more ways to get distracted. Another feature to learn. Another beautiful render to compare yourself to online. Another AI tool promising to make the whole process faster.
You can’t learn all of it, and honestly, you don’t need to.
So today I want to answer a question that I get asked constantly in training sessions and in messages. What should I actually focus on if I want my CLO3D skills to still be useful in a year or five years?
Whatever your role, my answer is broadly the same. Stop trying to predict every tool that you might need one day. Build the knowledge that lets you adapt when the tools inevitably change.
And to explain what I mean by that, I want to take you back to how I actually learned the software, because it’s shaped everything I now teach.
I came across CLO3D completely by accident back in 2019, while I was studying for my Masters in Fashion Design Management. It wasn’t the first time I had seen 3D software, but it was the first time I was genuinely impressed, both by the interface and by what it could actually do. I remember thinking, this is going to be the future of the industry, and I absolutely have to learn it. And so I did.
I was self-taught to begin with. I spent hours in the software recreating patterns from my own collection. Sometimes I would replicate a garment I already had, sometimes I would load in a DXF file and build it up from there, adding fabrics and details as I went. I still think that’s the best way to learn it, running through the whole process rather than just picking up bits and pieces here and there, because that’s when you actually see how the software supports your own workflow, not just how a single tool works in isolation.
I’ve got quite a varied background in the industry: visual merchandising, design, garment technology, product development, pattern making. So when I started learning CLO, I could immediately see how it would help each of those roles differently, which meant I dived into every single tool going. I want to be honest, that isn’t necessary for everyone. It depended on where I’d come from. A fashion designer, for example, doesn’t need to know how to build a pattern completely from scratch in CLO. They can work from an existing block and just adapt it.
I’ve kept growing that skill set since. My earliest files were not perfect, and I’ve gone back to those and improved them since. After I had taught myself the basics in CLO, I did a couple of online courses too, mainly to check that I hadn’t missed anything, because the software moves quickly, and the new AI integrations are making things both easier and, in some ways, harder too.
I do, saying that, have a couple of go-to AI tools in CLO now: the Pattern Drafter and the AI Pose Generator. I still find that both of them need human judgement and adjustment. The AI Pattern Drafter is genuinely useful for getting a base pattern ready from measurements, which you then adapt to suit your own styling. The AI Pose Generator has been particularly useful for fit-check poses on more niche garments, motorcycle clothing, athleisure, that kind of thing. They always need refining afterwards using the Human IK joints, but it makes the process quicker regardless.
So what does that story actually tell you about future-proofing your skills?
What most people think is that getting good at CLO means learning every tool, every menu, every shortcut, before they’re allowed to feel capable. I see that pressure in almost every learner I train.
What’s actually happening is different. The software knowledge is the easy part to catch up on later. What’s much harder to fake is garment knowledge: proportion, ease, seam construction, fabric behaviour, and the judgement to look at a simulated garment and know whether it’s actually right, not just whether it ran without falling apart.
CLO will simulate whatever you ask it to simulate. It doesn’t know whether the pattern is commercially viable, whether the seam construction makes sense, or whether the fabric is suitable for that silhouette. That still comes from you.
That’s genuinely good news, depending on where you’re coming from. If you come from pattern cutting, garment tech, or design, you are not starting from zero when you open CLO for the first time. You already speak the language of the garment, you’re just learning a new way to express it. If your strength is more on the visual and creative side, you might need to build more of that construction knowledge alongside the software. Either way, the answer isn’t “learn the whole interface,” it’s “learn the garment, and let CLO catch up to what you already know.”
The same applies to troubleshooting. Following a tutorial can feel like understanding, because the tutor clicks the right tool, the garment behaves, and you get the same result. The real learning starts when you open a different garment and it twists, or collapses, or the simulation goes unstable, and you have to work out why. That’s not a software problem you memorise your way out of. Trust me. It’s a diagnostic skill: what changed right before this happened, is this an arrangement issue, is the sewing direction correct, is the fabric contributing to the instability. That way of thinking is far more transferable than any single fix, because the interface will keep changing and that skill won’t.
So if I had to boil this down to advice, it’s the same three things I tell anyone starting out with CLO now.
One. You don’t need to know every tool. The software is overwhelming at first, I remember that all too well. It’s completely normal. It’s not a sign that you’re behind. Give yourself permission to not know everything on day one.
Two. Know your niche, and get properly comfortable with what actually supports your workflow. A designer doesn’t need to draft a pattern from scratch, a technical designer needs to go deep on fit, measurements and grading, and a pattern maker needs real depth in drafting and truing. Work out what your role actually needs from you, and build there first.
Three. Take it step by step. You are not going to become an expert overnight, and that’s fine, because you don’t need to. What you can do in that same amount of time is build your first garment. So focus on that first, rather than the whole picture at once.
And I would add one more thing that’s specific to where the software is right now. Use the AI tools, but don’t hand over your judgement along with the task. My AI Pattern Drafter and AI Pose Generator both save me real time, but neither of them is finished work, they’re a starting point. I then check and adjust with what I already know about the garment. That’s the mindset I would bring to any AI feature CLO adds from here. Not “can this do it for me,” but “can this get me to a faster starting point that I still need to check.”
Zoom out from CLO for a second, and this isn’t really a software point at all. It’s the same conversation we’re going to keep having about PLM, about AI, about whatever comes after that.
The tools keep changing. CLO’s own updates this year make that obvious. Better pattern automation, fabric-aware fit checking, more AI built into the render process. All useful. None of it replaces someone who understands the product.
I think that’s the thing worth holding on to as this industry gets more digital, more automated, and honestly a bit noisier. The software is rarely the hardest part. Knowing where it fits and knowing enough to judge what it gives you back is the actual skill. That’s true whether you’re learning CLO in your bedroom the way I did, or rolling it out across a whole team.
So here’s my question for you. Thinking about where you are right now, is the thing holding you back the software itself, or is it not being sure yet what you actually need it to do for your role?
Send me a message or connect with me on LinkedIn or Instagram and let me know, I read all of them.
The tool will keep changing. What won’t change is that someone needs to know whether the garment is actually right. Build that first, and the software becomes something you can always catch up on later.
Follow the podcast so you don’t miss the next episode, and let me know on LinkedIn or Instagram what you would like me to cover next.
From this podcast
Tools and tutorials mentioned
Know your niche: role-specific CLO3D tools
On AI and judgement
Work with me
Follow along
This episode mentions CLO3D as part of Laura’s professional practice and teaching experience. The episode is not sponsored by or affiliated with CLO3D.
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