What if pattern grading didn’t exist, because it didn’t need to?
As the Academic Winner of the 2025 3DRC Grand Challenge, the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) is rethinking fit from the ground up. Their winning concept blends 3D prototyping, AI, and real body data to automate grading, unlock true custom sizing, and turn every shopper into their own base size – transforming each garment into a digital original, made to fit.
In this conversation with Leigh Lavange (Adjunct Professor at FIT), we explore the thinking behind the solution: how it could slash inventory waste and returns, safeguard design integrity even at a one-to-one scale, and ultimately replace traditional grading with smarter, data-driven personalization.
It’s not just better fit; it’s a fundamental rewrite of how we size, scale, and serve the next generation of fashion.
🎥 Watch the full video interview below!
Don’t have time to watch the full video? Scroll down for a summary of key takeaways and noteworthy quotes.
Key Takeaways
1️⃣ The Fundamental Flaw of Grading
Traditional grading, built on statistical averages of thousands of body measurements, ends up creating garments designed for a mythical “average body” that doesn’t truly exist. The result? Shoppers everywhere have to compromise, awkwardly fitting into garments that were never actually meant for them.
When you take hundreds and thousands of average body measurements and create one size in the middle, oftentimes we’re creating a body shape that isn’t realistic…so therefore, no one’s really winning.
2️⃣ Turning Every Shopper into Their Own Base Size While Mantaining Design Intent
Leigh’s winning concept upends this by using 3D, AI and personal body data to make each customer their own base size; automatically adjusting the pattern the way a tailor would. Crucially, this still protects the designer’s vision. Brands control the style, silhouette and details, while the tech subtly tweaks for shape.
It’s like if you went to a tailor for a custom suit – they’d measure you and make a pattern just for you. I’m proposing the same thing, but automated. Most customers don’t want to design their own thing. They want expert designers to say what’s on trend.
3️⃣ From Heat Maps to Hard Data: How 3D & AI Quantify Fit
This approach is possible, in no small part, because of the evolution of 3D tools. Leigh describes moving beyond subjective fit checks to hard metrics, by mining the pressure and tension maps that already live inside 3D workflows. These heat maps show exactly how a garment presses, pulls or gaps on a digital body, thus turning intuition into math.
We’re already using pressure maps as subjective tools in 3D fits, saying ‘this looks too tight or too loose.’ But there’s real data behind that. We can quantify it – it’s like the avatar telling us ‘the chest is too tight.
4️⃣ Custom-Fitting Any Garment, Even the Wild Ones
Most existing mass-customization experiments focus on straightforward products like T-shirts. Leigh’s vision is far more ambitious. She wants to empower designers to dream big – asymmetrical, ruched, or tailored garments that still adapt beautifully to individual shapes.
I want a designer to submit an asymmetrical ruched dress with a flared skirt and be able to customise that size. That’s my ultimate goal.
5️⃣ Fixing Fashion’s Waste & Returns Problem For Good
This isn’t just a better experience for consumers. By only making garments after they’re purchased, brands cut the financial and environmental toll of unsold inventory. And by dialing in fit from the start, they tackle one of fashion’s biggest drivers of returns: clothes that just don’t fit right.
Inventory is one of our biggest wastes…And fit is the number one reason for returns – this could be a huge unlock.
6️⃣ Rewiring the Pipeline From Design to Manufacturing
It’s not enough to tweak patterns at the design stage. Leigh is clear that truly personalised fit requires a reimagined pipeline that links design, pattern engineering, grading, and even how factories read and cut files. It also means capturing decades of tacit pattern knowledge from people’s heads, and overcoming the constraints of today’s software.
Most pattern and grading knowledge is inside people’s heads…We can’t just change one part of product development. We have to change every piece from design to production so it’s interconnected.
7️⃣ Why Small Brands and Bold Partners Matter
Surprisingly, Leigh believes it may not be giant corporations who take this leap first. Smaller, more agile brands – those without entrenched bureaucracy – are often better positioned to experiment. Likewise, tech partners who champion new avatars and smarter automation will be essential to make it work.
Small brands can be more willing to take risks…In big corporations, just finding the person who puts the sizes on the website can take all day.
8️⃣ Never Accept ‘That’s Just How It’s Done’
For anyone in fashion or technology trying to rethink workflows with 3D and AI, Leigh has one core philosophy: question everything. If the only answer for why something’s done a certain way is “because that’s how it’s always been,” it’s exactly the right place to start disrupting.
Anytime someone says, ‘that’s just the way it’s always been done,’ I say, I call B.S. Tell me why…If we understand why, then we can question it – and maybe do it differently.
9️⃣ The 3DRC Grand Challenge as a Catalyst
The 3DRC Grand Challenge didn’t just give Leigh’s team a platform – it validated years of quietly developed ideas and energised FIT’s growing tech design programme. It’s also set the stage to attract students eager to merge creativity with engineering and truly innovate.
It puts our tech design department on the map…I hope it helps us bring in students who don’t just want a job, but want to challenge how we do things.
Next Steps
Leigh and the team at FIT aren’t just solving for fit – they’re laying down a bold new blueprint for fashion, where design creativity, digital precision, and true body personalization finally work hand in hand to serve both people and the planet.
Their groundbreaking work doesn’t just challenge how we size garments, but how we think about production, waste, and the very relationship between clothing and the body.
