The Complete Guide to Fashion Tech at a16z's NY Tech Week 2025

We're one week out from NY Tech Week and with almost 20 events dedicated to Fashion Tech this year, this is your guide on which you should be attending to maximize your time. Grab the last few seats!

Team,

Two years ago when I moved to NY, there wasn't a single Fashion Tech event during NY Tech Week. This year? Fashion Tech is taking over with almost 20 dedicated events brought to you my founders and community builders bring us all together.

But here's the thing—more is not always more unless it’s done thoughtfully.

The Fashion Tech community is diverse and each persona has distinct needs. A pre-seed founder needs pitch practice and technical co-founders. A fashion brand needs to understand which Series A+ companies can actually solve their problems at scale. An engineer wants to network with fashion-forward startups hiring, not just hear another generic tech talk. And Tech Week attendees are being introduced to “Fashion Tech” for the first time and just want to learn about what the space is about.

So Colette and I architected this week intentionally—designing each event to serve specific community segments while creating natural connection points between them. The result? A Fashion Tech Week that doesn't just bring people together, but brings the right people together at the right time.

So what can you expect from Fashion Tech at Tech Week this year?

Let’s get into it!

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But first… volunteer opportunities!!

To make these events happen— and keep them free— we hustle on our end to get sponsors and connect with people as eager as us to grow the fashion tech community! It takes a village, y’all. Here’s how you can be part of the village:

• We need 10 volunteers to help out day off for one (or more) events!

• Photographers for Thursday (4-7PM), Monday (6-8PM) and Tuesday (6:30-7:30PM).

If you’re interested in volunteering, please reply to this email or DM me by Friday, May 30th!

If you’re not able to volunteer but know a photographer or someone who would be interested helping day of, please share this with them.

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“The Talks”: NY Tech Week Fashion Tech Panels at FIT (Thursday Afternoon) - THE BIG SHOW

For: Everyone! Founders, Fashion and Tech Professionals, Investors, Students

On Thursday, June 5, in collaboration with The Fashion Institute of Technology, we’re bringing together the leaders of Fashion Tech's hottest startups and the AI experts shaping the future of Fashion. If you’re looking to keep your finger on the pulse of where tech is taking fashion, this is one you won’t want to miss. Here's what to expect:

Doors Open at 3:30 PM

4 to 6 PM Panels and Presentations

FASHION'S NEW R&R: RESALE AND RETURNS

• Croissant's CMO, Andrew Parietti

• Revive's Founder & CEO, Allison Lee

• Archive's Head of Growth, Shannon Powell

• Isle of Monday's Cofounder, Janelle Gray

7 MIN COUTURE CODE CRASH COURSES

Understanding Multi-Modal AI and How it Impacts Fashion with Amy Condie from wearnext

What You Need to Know About Agentic AI and It's Role in Fashion with Muni Xu from MAIStyle

NOT JUST TALK: FASHION AI IN ACTION

• Raspberry AI's founder and CEO, Cheryl Liu

• Daydream's CoFounder and CBO, Lisa Green

• PSYKHE AI's Founder & CEO, Anabel Maldonado

• Style Arcade's Head of Brand & partnerships, Brogan Hembrow

6-7 PM: Open networking

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The Match + Images from TPM April Mixer at Arête

“The Match”: Fashion Tech Speed Dating for Founders and Tech Talent (Wednesday Morning)

For: Founders hiring technical talent or looking for tech cofounder, software engineers, data scientists, aspiring technical cofounders.

Are you a founder looking for a technical co-founder or new tech guru? Are you an engineer or technical professional looking to break-in to Fashion Tech?

This event is for you all! In partnership with Fashion Tech company, Arête, at their store in SoHo, we will be running a speed-dating style event, so you can make as many connections as possible. To help us ensure you’re meeting the type of founders and technical talent you’re most interested in, please fill out the following form (below) and RSVP (above).

The Strut + The High Line (photo from NYT)

“The Strut”: Fashion Tech Pitch and Walk (Friday Morning)

For: Founders, Investors, Fashion/Tech Professionals Breaking Into Fashion Tech

Tech Week can a shock to the nervous system running between pitches and cocktail hours. That’s why Friday morning we’re slowing it down, grabbing our favorite drink to start our morning and walking the high line with fellow Fashion Tech enthusiasts. If you’ve been to a pitch and walk style event before, you’ll know this is a great way to meet people in a more casual setting, will several breaks to mix up groups and meet more people.

The Launch + FASHIONPHILE SHOWROOM

“The Launch”: Fashion Tech Mixer (Tuesday Evening)

For: Founders, Investors, Fashion/Tech Professionals, FashionTech Operators

For The Pattern Maker regulars, this is the standard mixer you all know and love. This time co-hosted in collaboration with in haus and FASHIONPHILE, we’re bring together the best and brightest professionals from fashion and tech to hopefully forge new connections and potential partnerships between the two industries.

The Pitch + Cooley LLP Hudson Yards office

“The Pitch”: Fashion Tech Pitch Studio (Monday Evening)

For: Founders, Investors

If you’ve participated in Tech Week before, you know you’ll be asking and answering “So what are you building?” no less than 100 times throughout the week.

To help pre seed startups nail their Tech Week pitch, we’ve partnered with leading startup law firm Cooley LLP, to bring together a panel of experts who’ve raised and invest in and coach startups on pitches all the time. Here are the experts:

• Katie Dunn, pitch coach, startup advisor and angel investor with nearly 30 investments to date.

• Alan Zong, the cofounder and partner of UpScaleX, Palo Alto based seed fund, accelerator & founders' community.

• Kate Sanner, the cofounder and CEO of Beni a leading fashion tech startup reimagining how we shop, who’s raised $6.5M to date.

We have 9 startups spanning B2B, B2C, and B2B2C changing the game for everything from Fashion manufacturing and supply chain to shopping discovery and last mile delivery. Each founder will give their 60 second no-slide pitch and then get 5 mins of feedback.

Investors, this is your opportunity to hear from a vetted group of pre seed founders ready to raise. Founders, this is your chance to learn from the experts and get tips for your own pitch.

“The Salon”: Fashion Innovation Leaders VIP Dinner (Friday Evening)

For: Fashion Brand Directors and above, B2B Series A+ FashionTech Founders

To close out the week we are hosting a private dinner for fashion brand directors and above looking to learn more about the leading B2B Series A+ Fashion Tech companies they can partner with. If you are a leader at a fashion brand, looking for ways to integrate tech into your function, there are a few seats left so please RSVP!

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Which event’s are you most excited about? What other ideas do you all have for events to support the fashion tech community? Let me know in the comments:

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This is just the start!

There are another 17 events all specifically for the fashion tech community. To help you navigate the Fashion Tech events at Tech Week, we’ve created a full calendar that you can find on The Pattern Maker under “NY TechWeek Calendar“

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Thank you to our sponsors for the week!

This week of events would not be possible with out the generous support of our week long sponsors: MAIStyle and veristlye.

MAIStyle is a B2B fashion technology startup addressing the $200B+ global problem of high returns in fashion e-commerce caused by incorrect sizing, poor fitting, and styling mismatch. Powered by a proprietary domain knowledge graph, hyper-realistic digital twin generation, and lifelike virtual try-on technologies, MAIStyle’s AI personal styling and shopping agent helps fashion brands reduce returns, boost conversions, and deliver deeply personalized shopping experiences at scale.

veristyle is a proven B2B2C AI Style Insight recommendation engine that enables brands to transform their generic product feeds into perfect recommendations with just two customer photos. Our computer vision technology analyzes 200+ physical traits to automate expert styling and match users with ideal fabrics, cuts, patterns, and colors - driving measurable improvements in end-consumer conversion and retention.

I also want to give a big thank you to our venue sponsors throughout the week — Cooley LLP, FASHIONPHILE, Arête and FIT — and our food and beverage sponsors — Popzup (Gourmet Popcorn), Ramona (canned wine), Mocktail Club (NA drinks), Dio (canned cocktails). Like I said before, these events would not be possible to keep free and open to the community without them! Show them some love throughout the week.

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That’s enough from me for now. Excited to spend next week with you all!

The Pattern Maker