Planting plenty of onions for the Italian herb garden while people are putting up Christmas decorations and having fun at parties. December brings out the best in folks. Manufacturing, you see a repeating theme of 6 points on successful fashion asks during agriculture booms. Cotton prices are bringing them to mind for 2026 sucess trends:
-
Custom embroidery
-
Metal work in gold, silver, and bronze
-
Dark Dyes (especially blue, purple, and deep red)
-
Higher quality fabrics like: wool, linen, silk, and leather
-
Cool trims
-
Excess fabric turning into fluffy garments and tents for festivals and outdoor live events
The list isn’t new and embroidery always works BEST. Wonder how many craft shops will sell AI SORA embroidery kits for 2026? The list supposedly goes back to ancient times when Moses built the first temple for God on divine instructions. Later, King Solomon folded it into the priest and king aristocracy classes as tithes and rent in the West. You see it again in the rise of the Italian nobility from Roman to the Renaissance with their Northern wool factories. A noble or wealthy landowner places an order for all the outfits for his staff and adds a little extra to his look. The French, British, and other European powers get involved with colonialism. The British excel at the textiles which formed the backbone of early US power too for better and worse. We’ve seen some great movie trailers for British fantasy period shows/movies in 2026.
The idea for this blog post came from conversations on successful AI changes in the industry which seems to focus on specific LLMs models, not general AGI. Especially, chat help bots. They were pretty optimistic about their kids' futures in college as well as the limitations of current technology. If you have 15 minutes to watch, check out this YouTube video by an actual industry photographer on real experiences working with AI and where it fails. It’s great. The major limit being: AI lies. About everything. Especially math. We seem to be getting a sales pitch more than a finished product. A very good sales pitch, but anyone who does ANY patternmaking will see that what is being created is NOT the tech packs Gerber, etc. with the underlying math or physical good. It’s back of the napkin sketches concept art a client hands the sales team at MAGIC or PROJECT.
And yes, that is useful as real reductions in design costs on projects. But given Marvel has basically driven itself off a cliff with too much CGI fluff, it’s worth looking at cotton and a very old six point rational list that’s come down through thousands of years of lived experience on how to wow your clients and keep the lights on. European classic aristocracy embroidery is what we’re watching for 2026. In the US, the music industry has been buying blanks with bulk orders and having them made into custom bling for decades so if you want to research how we in the US ride this wave look at Dolly Parton's costumes and her theme park, Michael Jackson's King of Style Book on pop, and anything that involves structured tailored garments as they support the weight of extra flash like Williamsburg, VA or Vivienne Westwood's British punk rock.
And yes, AI will make some SUPER cute custom stuff in SORA with Disney licensing, but let’s recognize the limitations. Use the tool, not the delusion.