Companies to Watch: Fashion Tech Startups Keeping NYC in Style
Fashion tech in NYC is *so* this season these days:
There are over 1,300 fashion tech companies in the Big Apple.
Since 2020, NYC-based fashion tech companies have raised a combined $1.42 billion.
So far in 2025, NYC-based fashion tech companies have raised $142 million — up from $24.8 million in all of 2024.
It’s no wonder why. Each year the city plays host to New York Fashion Week, bringing together the world's biggest designers and brands to show off their latest looks. The event brings the city around $1 billion annually, and this year’s second installment runs from Sept. 11-16. Add in NYC’s fashion schools (in 2022, over 2,000 students graduated with degrees in the industry), and you have the recipe for a fashion capital of the world.
Plus, the city boasts a number of programs that support the fashion innovators of tomorrow. Take the New York Fashion Tech Lab, for example. The Lab unveiled its 12th cohort earlier this year, and its alumni network includes some of the sector’s most impactful startups.
As we kick off New York Fashion Week, we spoke with four founders of NYC-based fashion tech startups who are innovating to spruce up the city’s looks and keep us ahead of the next fashion trend.
For this edition of Companies to Watch, meet:
Sophie Friedfeld-Gebaide (founder of Atelier Society)
Lisa Yamner Green (founder of Daydream)
Carly Bigi (founder of Laws of Motion)
Emilie Ho (founder of Make the Dot)
Atelier Society
“What makes New York City so unique is the people. The best advice I was given is don’t forget to utilize the best resource New York City offers — its people.”
What does your company do? What problem is it working to solve?
Shop. Clicked. Tailored. Delivered. We believe that is how easy alterations and repairs should be.
Atelier Society is the first end-to-end alterations logistics platform for retailers. We identify fit problems before delivery and coordinate alteration logistics from retailer to manufacturer to customer’s door. Essentially, we enable retailers to offer consumers tailoring before delivery for both in-person and online purchases.
The best part? It’s free for retailers to use.
A question we like to ask every founder – why New York?
New York is the center of fashion and we really felt this was the best place to build Atelier Society.
One of your points is reducing returns and waste. Can you quantify or explain how Atelier Society contributes to a more sustainable apparel ecosystem?
The fashion industry is one of the largest global polluters.
While pursuing my Masters of Environmental Management, I discovered that a large portion of fashion waste was actually due to issues with apparel fit. Around 40% of all e-commerce apparel and 8% of in-store purchases are returned. Twenty-five percent of those purchases are thrown away. The number one reason for returns? Around 70% are due to issues with fit.
This makes sense if you understand how garments are designed. Retailers are incentivized to make as few sizes as possible for as large a population as possible in order to reduce costs. Just one example: around 74% of American women are petite (under 5’4”), but only about 4% of apparel is offered in petite sizes. This leads to the majority of women, in terms of length alone, having clothes that do not properly fit them. Add in different shapes — women with different-sized busts, hips, and waists — and clothing would have to come in an inordinate number of sizes to fit everyone.
What Atelier does is tackle a root cause of returns. Atelier fixes fit issues before shipping.
What are your self-care routines to recharge while still being heads down building a company?
I really enjoy gardening. Whenever I feel a tad overwhelmed, I tend to visit my tiny little garden and check in on how the tomatoes are doing.
Time for some New York-themed rapid fire questions — where’s your favorite place to grab a slice of pizza in New York?
I am originally from Long Island, so I have to be loyal to my hometown. Joanne’s Pizza is my favorite slice.
Where’s your favorite coffee shop in New York?
I actually do not drink coffee, but I am a pretty avid tea drinker. I highly recommend Prince Tea House. Their tea blends are incredible.
Do you have a favorite spot to escape the noise of the city?
I love going to different libraries in NYC to escape. New York has some of the prettiest libraries in the world. I love curling up with a good book and admiring the architecture of New York’s libraries.
What’s one piece of advice – that you’ve shared or was shared with you – on building a startup in New York City?
When you build your startup, your first instinct will be to hole yourself up in your house and work on building the perfect product, shutting out the outside world. That is how startups build a perfect product that no one uses.
What makes New York City so unique is the people. The best advice I was given is don’t forget to utilize the best resource New York City offers — its people. Go out and talk to your customers, meet fellow founders, and industry experts. Repeat.
When we first started Atelier Society, I personally visited over 100 stores and chatted with hundreds of store owners, managers and associates. This was all before we ever got our first customer. New Yorkers want to give you their opinion and they will be brutally honest, something that is not easy to find in other markets. In our case, we learned that our service was desperately needed, were asked the same questions that we now get asked in our large pitch meetings, and were told in extensive detail all the various pain points of these retail stores relating to our product.
The best part? We were even told which stores we should visit next, were connected to various managers and store owners, and were told how to sell our product better to those stores. You have to love New York.
Daydream
“New York is full of people. Meet them, learn from them, and share what you know.”
What does your company do? What problem is it working to solve?
Daydream is the first chat-based shopping agent built exclusively for fashion. Shoppers today face a paradox of choice — endless options, but little time to sort through them. Daydream solves this with intelligent, conversational search that matches personal style, size, and budget.
With curated results from 8,000+ brands, it transforms online shopping into effortless discovery and aims to be the starting point for every fashion search.
A question we like to ask every founder – why New York?
New York is the heart of both business and fashion in the U.S. I’m based here, along with our CTO, Maria Belousova, and a talented 20+ person team spanning engineering, product, marketing, and business development.
In a competitive space already being explored by some big tech players, what makes Daydream's AI-powered discovery engine truly unique, especially in its application to fashion search?
Unlike broad tech platforms, Daydream is hyper-focused on fashion. Our AI understands fit, style, and nuance — not just keywords. The conversational interface creates a personal journey, learning intent through natural dialogue. With our vast, curated catalog and features like “Say More,” Daydream makes shopping intuitive, engaging, and truly tailored.
What early feedback have you received from users and retail partners during beta, particularly regarding conversion, personalization, and integration?
Shoppers love testing Daydream with increasingly nuanced questions. They especially value shopping by occasion and adding personal details that refine results. The more they engage, the smarter and more tailored the experience becomes.
Looking ahead, how do you envision Daydream evolving beyond fashion discovery? What’s on the product roadmap?
We’re focused on perfecting fashion discovery. It’s a massive category with endless complexity, and our priority is to be the best at it before expanding into new areas.
What are your self-care routines to recharge while still being heads down building a company?
A run in Central Park, a night at WXOU Bar, regular catch-ups with friends, and always planning my next vacation.
Time for some New York-themed rapid fire questions — where’s your favorite place to grab a slice of pizza in New York?
My son and I are on a pizza quest — Rubirosa is currently our top pick.
Where’s your favorite coffee shop in New York?
Café Flor in Chelsea.
Do you have a favorite spot to escape the noise of the city?
It’s New York or nowhere.
What’s one piece of advice – that you’ve shared or was shared with you – on building a startup in New York City?
New York is full of people. Meet them, learn from them, and share what you know.
Laws of Motion
“The combination of the apparel industry, top talent, and electric energy puts NYC in a category of one.”
What does your company do? What problem is it working to solve?
Laws of Motion’s AI sizing technology is solving the $1 trillion return crisis and powering e-commerce profitability in the apparel industry by guiding customers to order their best-fitting size per product when shopping online. Customers who use our solution when shopping brands like Alice + Olivia, Re/Done, and Simkhai are converting at a 20X higher rate and returning 80% fewer items.
A question we like to ask every founder – why New York?
Laws of Motion exists to empower others to be a force at whatever they choose to be — what better place on earth to do that than NYC? The combination of the apparel industry, top talent, and electric energy puts NYC in a category of one.
You're operating a zero-waste, zero-inventory model with on-demand manufacturing and deliveries within 10 days. What supply chain innovations and partnerships have been essential in making that possible?
We’re lucky to partner with some of the most innovative suppliers and manufacturers who believe in our vision and are willing to embrace on-demand operations. Building our initial supply chain was an exercise in relationship development and has evolved into trusting and mutually-beneficial partnerships.
Your AI-driven Fit Quiz and Body Scan can map a personalized size in under 60 seconds with over 99% accuracy. How did you develop this technology, and what were the biggest hurdles in building such a precise sizing system?
Rather than building our AI sizing technology in a silo, as is common with most SaaS solutions, we built it in its own DTC brand, which still functions as an R&D incubator for rapid testing and iteration. This approach allowed us to longitudinally study customer usage, amass billions of data points to custom-train our algorithms, and use highly-tailored products as human-in-the-loop for our proprietary ML models.
It also allowed us to prove what was possible — the brand has a 1% return rate. One of the biggest hurdles was understanding the subconscious biases that are inherently present in self-reported data. This became one of our competitive advantages as we developed “psychological coefficients” that calibrate predicted body measurements based on known biases within certain customer cohorts.
Your Perfect Fit Guarantee promises a full refund (or tailored solutions) if customers aren’t completely satisfied. Could you share examples of how customer feedback is used to refine both your fit models and product offering?
Laws of Motion’s customers play a critical role in our ability to be a rising tide for the whole industry. Having such a diverse and engaged customer base allowed us to amass one of the most comprehensive sets of body measurements across all types of body shapes and sizes 00-40. They also play a critical role in learning how to optimize UI and features.
For example, our sizing solution is the first multi-modal interface, providing customers with choice between a fit quiz, body scan, or entering their measurements. We learned that modality preference is highly correlated to age so offering all three modes yields a 10X higher usage rate than other e-comm enabling technologies.
What are your self-care routines to recharge while still being heads down building a company?
I view self-care not as a luxury, but as a critical part of sustainable success — especially when building and scaling a company. I’m an early riser and start each day meditating, journaling, and working out. In the evenings, I hold space to read, reflect, and sauna. For me, self-care means maintaining routines that support my overall mental and physical health so I have the capacity to lead, learn, and grow.
Time for some New York-themed rapid fire questions — where’s your favorite place to grab a slice of pizza in New York?
Fini Pizza is the greatest to ever do it — their tomato pie is my all-time favorite and the white pie with lemon is incredible.
Where’s your favorite coffee shop in New York?
Rosemary’s in the West Village and Ariston in Greenwich Village are good for the soul – coffee just tastes better when surrounded by beautiful plants.
Do you have a favorite spot to escape the noise of the city?
I’m lucky to live near Washington Square Park and the Westside Highway. I find the benches in the park to be so peaceful in the morning and the breeze from the Hudson on the piers to be so energizing.
What’s one piece of advice – that you’ve shared or was shared with you – on building a startup in New York City?
If it was easy or obvious then it would already be done. We live on a rock in space and if it’s within you to build then lean into that purpose and make it happen!
Make the Dot
“New York is the world's most incredible magnet for talent and ambition. Let it fuel you, and take advantage of it. And enjoy the ride!”
What does your company do? What problem is it working to solve?
Make the Dot is an AI-powered design platform built for fashion teams. We replace clunky PDFs and slow sample workflows with a collaborative canvas where designers can create photorealistic styles, spec them, and share with buyers instantly. We’re solving the inefficiency of concept-to-sample workflows in fashion.
A question we like to ask every founder – why New York?
NY is the fashion capital — home to top design schools, brand HQs, and generations of product experts. But more than that, it’s great to do business in New York. You can get a meeting with anyone here. No pedigree needed. Hustle gets you in the door. That energy is so valuable for early-stage builders.
How has your vision for Make the Dot evolved since its inception, and where do you see the platform heading in the next 3-5 years?
We started by solving design speed and collaboration. Today, we’re building the connective tissue between design, product development, and suppliers — all in one canvas. In 3–5 years, we’ll power the entire product lifecycle, from concept to shelf.
How has Make the Dot impacted design teams and workflows, especially around sustainability, sample reduction, and remote collaboration?
Teams now align on direction without making the physical garment. Our renders replace early samples which helps to reduce waste and enable brands to test consumer demand early. Designers co-create live with sales teams and buyers, accelerating decision-making — even across time zones.
With a vibrant design community using your platform, how do you gather and incorporate designer feedback into ongoing product development?
We host in-person workshops with nearly all our customers — it’s how we design with them, not just for them. A lot of our users and manufacturing partners are friends. We hang out at Sunday BBQs, swap ideas, and sketch features on napkins.
You’ve built features like the collaborative canvas, photorealistic style builder, and fabric library. How do you decide which tools to prioritize, and what’s next on your roadmap?
We prioritize what shortens the design-to-decision loop. The canvas, style builder, and fabric tools all came from that goal. Next up: deeper PLM integration, a full-scale material library, and more tech pack automation to close the feedback loop.
What are your self-care routines to recharge while still being heads down building a company?
Pottery. A group chat with other founders who keep it real. Skipping the inbox on Sundays.
Time for some New York-themed rapid fire questions — where’s your favorite place to grab a slice of pizza in New York?
I’m not a huge pizza girl - but Scarr’s is pretty damn good.
Where’s your favorite coffee shop in New York?
Arabica
Do you have a favorite spot to escape the noise of the city?
I love the hustle and bustle :) But once in a while, I do miss long hikes and nature. Still trying to find that in New York City!
What’s one piece of advice – that you’ve shared or was shared with you – on building a startup in New York City?
No one cares where you came from. Build something useful, show up, follow up. New York will meet you halfway.
