Fashion is a trend that’s always changing over time. People are always attracted to trendy, stylish, and fashionable designs. And as a fashion designer, you should take advantage of these trends to come up with new, creative designs to satisfy your customer’s requirements.
To have a competitive edge and increase your chances of success in the fashion industry, you need to invest in the best fashion design software. These software help you to take your creative imaginations to promotable models.
The good news is that there are lots of great fashion design software to choose from. The not so good news, however, is that these software vary greatly in terms of features and pricing, which makes finding the perfect software solution for you pretty overwhelming.
Luckily for you, we’ve come up with a list of the best fashion design software that are sure to help you stay on top of the game.
| pricing | users | Garment Templates and Models | System Requirements | Free Demo Training | |
| PatternSmith | Free-trial/paid | Pattern Making | Yes | Windows | User Manuals |
| Digital Fashion Pro | Free/ Paid | Digital Fashion Sketching & Illustration | Yes | Windows Or Mac | Yes. Video and eTraining Guide |
| Valentina | Free/ open source | Independent and small designers | Web-based | Yes | |
| Tailornova | Free | Small,
Medium and Large designers |
Yes | Web-based | Help Guides and
Blogs |
| CLO 3D | Free trial/paid | Garment Design and Pattern Making | No | Windows and Mac | Yes |
| Bontex | Paid | Textile And Fashion Design | Yes | Mac and Windows | Yes. Online Courses |
1. PatternSmith
PatternSmith tops our list of the best fashion design software as it boasts industry-leading capabilities, which makes it incredibly easy for you to create perfect textile patterns of any type. This award-winning software comes packed with unique features, including pattern grading and layout, CAD tools, art storage, textile pattern design, and many more.
Features
One thing that makes PatternSmith stand out from other fashion design is the automatic nesting feature that allows you nest patterns together and maximize every inch of space. This way, you get to minimize fabric waste and reduce costs.
The software also provides you with an extensive range of templates that ensures you get the most suitable option for your project. You also can create a custom fit for your entire project.
With the PatternSmith software, you can come up with 3D patterns and later transform them into 2D for cutting. It also features a HideShot add-on that helps you to efficiently outline and capture flaws in your patterns, saving you plenty of time.
This software also allows you to export files quite easily and transfer them to your cutting machine or other editing software.
Some of PatternSmith’s users have reported experiencing issues with the ‘Back Button’ not working as expected, especially, when they’re working with complex patterns.
Digital Fashio Pro
Coming second on our list is Digital Fashion Pro, which is another excellent fashion design software that helps you to create manufacture-ready sketches and design your clothing collections with ease. The software offers you a free introductory fashion design course and requires a one-time payment for you to get a lifetime-license.
PROS
Digital Fashion Pro separates itself from other software as it includes an extensive range of customizable garment templates. This way, you get a framework from which you can create your designs to achieve uniformity. The templates being customizable means that you can easily modify, alter, shrink, or stretch them to come up with unique designs. This also helps eliminate repetition in the design process.
The Digital Fashion Pro software also allows you to include your own digital fabrics into your designs. You also can add your logo and artwork into the templates to see how they’ll look like on the garment. This way, you also get to adjust the scale and placement for the perfect look.
Using this software, you can create clean professional-looking sketches that enable your manufacturer to understand your designs better and produce high-quality clothing.
CONS
While the software is remarkably easy to use even for beginners, it sometimes can become laggish, especially with internet overload.
3. Valentina
Valentina is a free and open-source software solution that’s widely used by independent and small designers as well as textile creators for drafting perfect garment patterns.
Features
Valentina packs rock-solid automated workflows and numerous user-friendly features, making it one of the software that’s will transform how you design your garments.
This software can be used on both Windows and Linux devices and allows you to easily create layouts for exporting to PNG and SVG and transferring them to a cutting machine. With this software, you get to better understand the various styles, colors, patterns, and aesthetic features so you can create stylish and fashionable designs that meet your customer’s requirements.
The software allows you to create garment patterns using standard sizing tables or even an individual set of measurements. By combining traditional methods with the latest technologies, this software enables you to come up with unique patterns that give you a competitive edge in the market.
4. Tailornova
Tailornova is inarguably one of the best 3D fashion design software that helps you cut down the lengthy design process and create unlimited designs much easier and faster. The software is entirely web-based and comes loaded with many useful and user-friendly features.
Features
Tailornova’s highlight feature is the vast collection of smart multi-purpose templates that allows you to quickly and easily create unlimited 3D designs even without prior knowledge in design. With this software, you can create your designs on a digital sketch board and place them on 3D structures to check for stitching, fitting, and much more.
The software also provides you with pre-built body figures of varying sizes, which you can customize accordingly to meet your unique requirements. Tailornova also allows you to preview different colors and fabric patterns on the 3D image of the design.
This allows you to get custom-fitted patterns easier, faster, and with precision.
The only drawback of Tailornova is that it doesn’t include a free trial or a free version.
5. CLO 3D
CLO 3D is a popular fashion design software with an easy workflow that helps you to create high-quality, realistic digital garments.
Features
CLO 3D comes loaded with different toolsets that allow you to design an extensive range of garments. Clo3D provides you with a vast range of sketches and images, allowing you to create 3D garments easily.
The software instantaneously reviews any changes you’ve made to your 2D patterns, colors, textures, and delivers 3D simulation of them. It also allows you to preview all your creations before finalization. T5his way, you get to see how the designs will look in real-life before undergoing the final rendering.
This software is also incredibly easy to use as it comes with an intuitive interface that even beginners can navigate easily. It also includes tutorial resources and videos to help you to quickly and easily learn how to use it.
The free trial version of the CLO3D the option of fabrics, colors, sewing, and cut styles you can use in your designs.
6. Bontex
This is another great all-in-one software solution that helps you to efficiently create and manage your garment designs. It includes a robust database where you can archive your product designs and images.
Features
Bontex offers you a set of different tools that help you quickly and easily create garment designs for knitting, printing, 3D simulation, and much more.
The software solution includes an extensive library of vector bases that consists of a vast collection of accessories and figures for men, women, and kids, which makes it incredibly easy and faster for you to build creative designs.
Featuring CAD tools, this software comes with a clean interface where you can manually draw and design patterns as well as nesting and sizing of your designs. With Bontex’s fashion design software, you will also be able to build your designs with realistic 3D effects.