The vocabulary a tech pack, a sourcing brief and a compliance dossier are written in - and what each term decides once you are actually making something.
Tech pack
Also known as: Technical package, Technical pack, Spec pack
A tech pack is the specification document a factory builds a garment from: flat sketches with construction callouts, the bill of materials, points of measure and the grading rules, trims, labelling and packing instructions.
It is the contract between design and production. Anything not written in it is decided by the factory, which is where most fit and quality disputes begin - a missing stitch type, an unstated seam allowance, a trim referenced by look rather than by supplier code. A complete pack is what makes a sample reproducible at bulk, and what makes a defect arguable when it is not.
Generate a tech pack →Bill of materials
Also known as: BOM, Bill of materials fashion
A bill of materials is the itemised list of every component in a garment - shell fabric, lining, interlining, thread, zips, buttons, labels, hangtags, polybag - each with its supplier, reference, colour, placement and consumption per unit.
The BOM is what a cost sheet is calculated from and what a buyer chases when a component is late. Consumption per unit is the line that decides margin: an over-stated fabric consumption prices you out of the order, an under-stated one is discovered at cut.
Production and specs →Grading and the size curve
Also known as: Grade rules, Size curve, Grading rules
Grading is the rule set that scales a base-size pattern up and down the size range; the size curve is the ratio in which those sizes are actually bought.
They answer two different questions and are often confused. Grading is geometry - how much each point of measure moves per size, which is not uniform across the body. The size curve is demand - the proportion of each size in the buy, which varies by market and channel and is what leaves you with unsold XS or a sold-out L. Getting the first wrong produces garments that do not fit; getting the second wrong produces garments nobody buys.
Production and specs →Points of measure
Also known as: POM, Measurement spec
Points of measure are the named places on a garment that are measured to check it was made to specification - chest, waist, hem sweep, sleeve length, shoulder - each with a target value and a tolerance.
A POM without a tolerance is not a specification, because no garment measures exactly. The tolerance is the argument you can win: a piece outside it is a defect the factory owns, a piece inside it is one you accepted when you wrote the number.
Generate a tech pack →AQL inspection
Also known as: Acceptance Quality Limit, AQL, Acceptable quality level
An AQL inspection is a statistical sampling standard for accepting or rejecting a production lot: a sample size is drawn from the lot and the number of defects found is compared against accept and reject numbers set by the agreed quality limit.
Two things about it are routinely misread. It is SAMPLING, so it does not certify that every unit is good - it bounds how bad the lot can be before you would have caught it. And the defect CLASSIFICATION (critical, major, minor) carries as much weight as the limit, because the same fault counted differently changes the verdict on the same lot.
Production and specs →Time and action calendar
Also known as: T&A calendar, Critical path, Time & action
A time and action calendar is the backward-planned schedule for a season: every milestone from fabric commitment to ex-factory dated from the delivery date, with the owner and the lead time for each step.
It is planned backward because the ship date is the fixed point and everything else is negotiable only up to a point. Its value is not the dates but the DEPENDENCIES: knowing which slip costs a day and which one costs the season, so a late lab dip is escalated and a late hangtag is not.
Production and specs →Landed cost and Incoterms
Also known as: Landed cost, Incoterms, FOB, DDP
Landed cost is what a unit actually costs you in your own warehouse - product cost plus freight, duty, insurance and handling; Incoterms are the standard three-letter terms (EXW, FOB, CIF, DAP, DDP among them) that state who bears which of those costs and where the risk transfers.
Two quotes are not comparable until they are on the same Incoterm. A cheaper FOB price can land dearer than a DDP one once freight, duty rate and origin rules are applied, and the term also decides who is holding the goods when something goes wrong - which is the part that matters when it does.
Production and specs →Supply chain tiers
Also known as: Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3, Tier 2 supplier
Supply chain tiers describe distance from the finished product: Tier 1 is the factory that assembles the garment, Tier 2 the mills and processors that make and finish the fabric, Tier 3 the yarn and material producers, and beyond that raw-material extraction.
Most brands know Tier 1 well and thin out fast below it, which is why traceability and compliance work is almost always a Tier 2 and 3 problem. Impact, chemistry and origin are decided at those tiers, so a claim you cannot substantiate is usually a tier you cannot see.
Sourcing and suppliers →Minimum order quantity
Also known as: MOQ, Minimum order
A minimum order quantity is the smallest quantity a supplier will produce, quoted per style, per colour or per fabric depending on where the constraint sits.
Which UNIT the MOQ is quoted in is the thing to establish first: a mill minimum per colour constrains your palette rather than your volume, and a factory minimum per style constrains your range plan. A small brand is usually blocked by fabric minimums long before factory ones.
Sourcing and suppliers →Four-point fabric inspection
Also known as: 4-point system, Four point system, Fabric inspection
The four-point system grades fabric quality by assigning penalty points to visible defects according to their size, totalling them over the inspected area and comparing the result against an agreed threshold per unit area.
It runs before cut, and that is the whole point of it: fabric rejected on the roll is a supplier conversation, while the same fabric found after cutting is your loss. It also gives a numeric basis for that conversation, which a subjective judgement about whether cloth looks acceptable does not.
Sourcing and suppliers →Material and factory certifications
Also known as: GOTS, OEKO-TEX, GRS, Bluesign
Certifications are third-party schemes attesting to a property of a material, a process or a facility - organic fibre content and processing, restricted-substance testing, recycled content and chain of custody, or chemical management at the mill.
Each one certifies a DIFFERENT thing and they are not interchangeable: a scheme covering fibre origin says nothing about the dyehouse, and one covering substances in the finished article says nothing about the farm. The other half is validity - a certificate is issued to a named entity for a period and a scope, so the question is never whether one exists but whether it covers this supplier, this material, today.
Sourcing and suppliers →Digital Product Passport
Also known as: DPP, Product passport
A Digital Product Passport is a structured, machine-readable record attached to a product carrying data about its composition, origin, durability, repairability and end-of-life handling, accessible through a carrier such as a QR code.
It is a data problem before it is a labelling one. The fields it asks for are established at Tier 2 and Tier 3, so a brand that cannot see below its assembly factory cannot populate them - which makes the passport gap and the traceability gap the same gap, discovered in that order.
Sourcing and suppliers →ESPR
Also known as: Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, EU ecodesign regulation
ESPR is the EU Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, the framework that sets ecodesign requirements for products placed on the EU market and provides the basis for the Digital Product Passport.
It is a FRAMEWORK regulation, which is why its timeline is read wrong so often: the obligations that bite a given category arrive through later product-specific acts rather than all at once. The planning question is therefore which of your categories is in scope and when, not whether the regulation applies.
Market intelligence →CSRD
Also known as: Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive
CSRD is the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, which requires in-scope companies to report sustainability information to a common standard, audited, alongside their financial reporting.
The shift it represents is from voluntary narrative to assured disclosure: the same claim that was a marketing line becomes a reported figure someone signs. In practice that pushes the work upstream, because a number that has to survive assurance has to come from a supply chain you can evidence.
Market intelligence →Open to buy
Also known as: OTB, Open-to-buy
Open to buy is the budget still available to purchase into a period, calculated from planned sales, planned markdowns and planned closing stock against what is already on order.
It is the discipline that stops a good season becoming an overstocked one. Because it is a PLANNED figure it moves as the season trades - a strong month releases budget and a weak one removes it - so an OTB that has not been reforecast is a number about the season you expected rather than the one you are in.
Task automation →Sell-through
Also known as: Sell-through rate, STR
Sell-through is the proportion of received stock sold in a period, and it is the primary read on whether a style is working.
It is only interpretable against ELAPSED time and the price it was achieved at. A high rate in week two can mean the buy was too small as easily as the style is strong, and a rate achieved on markdown is a different fact from the same rate at full price - which is why it is read beside weeks-of-cover and realised margin rather than alone.
Task automation →Line sheet
Also known as: Linesheet, Wholesale line sheet
A line sheet is the wholesale selling document for a collection: each style with its image, colourways, size range, composition, wholesale and retail price, minimums and delivery window.
It is a working document rather than a beautiful one - a buyer writes an order against it, so what it needs is completeness and accuracy in the fields an order is placed on. The lookbook makes the argument; the line sheet takes the order.
Production and specs →Moodboard
Also known as: Mood board, Concept board
A moodboard is a composed reference surface that fixes the direction of a collection or a campaign - palette, material, silhouette, casting and atmosphere held together in one view.
Its job is to make a direction ARGUABLE before anything is made, which is why a good one carries families rather than one scene: a weighted palette, fabric at macro, full looks, styling detail, the world it sits in. A board that is one beautiful image is a picture, not a direction.
Build a moodboard →Lookbook
Also known as: Look book, Season lookbook
A lookbook presents a season as styled looks in sequence - the collection shown as it is meant to be worn and read, rather than listed.
It is the persuasion document that sits beside the line sheet's arithmetic. Sequence is the work: which look opens, what follows it, and where the range's argument turns - a buyer reads a lookbook as a point of view before reading it as a set of products.
Build a lookbook →Colourway
Also known as: Colorway, Colour way
A colourway is one specific colour combination a style is produced in; the same pattern in three colourways is three sellable options and one set of patterns.
Colourways are where range width is bought cheaply and where minimums bite hardest - each one is usually a separate dye lot and often a separate fabric minimum, so adding a fourth can cost more than adding a second style. Lab dips and continuity of shade across lots are the practical work of getting them right.
Creative production →Pre-collection
Also known as: Pre-fall, Resort, Cruise, Pre-season
Pre-collections are the ranges delivered between the main seasonal collections - pre-fall ahead of autumn, resort or cruise ahead of spring - and they sit in store far longer than the show collections do.
They are commercial rather than editorial by design: longer on the floor, broader in the middle of the range, and for many houses a larger share of wholesale volume than the collections that get photographed. Planning a season without them describes the part of the year that gets attention rather than the part that gets sold.
Trend forecasting →Our own vocabulary, defined here so it means the same thing wherever you meet it.
Agentic AI fashion
Also known as: Agentic AI in fashion, Agentic AI for fashion, Agentic AI in the fashion industry
Agentic AI fashion is an AI system for the fashion industry that doesn't just answer questions but autonomously plans, executes multi-step research, runs tools, and produces real fashion deliverables — trend reports, supplier matrices, brand audits, sustainability filings — end to end.
Where a chatbot stops after answering a question, an agentic AI continues: it sequences hundreds of tool calls across web search, supplier databases, runway archives, retail signals, sustainability registries, chart generators, and document builders. McLeuker AI is the first agentic AI platform built specifically for the fashion industry; the agent's plan is visible up front, revisable mid-run, and the output is a finished file (Excel, PDF, PPTX, Word) — not a chat transcript.
Try Agentic AI FashionFashion tech
Also known as: Fashion technology, Fashion technology platform, Fashion technology AI
Fashion tech (also called fashion technology) is the application of technology — software, AI, data, hardware, and digital tools — across design, production, supply chain, retail, and marketing in the fashion industry.
Fashion tech spans CAD design tools, PLM and ERP systems, e-commerce platforms, AR/VR try-on, RFID and IoT inventory, wearables, generative AI for design, and the AI fashion research layer McLeuker AI occupies. McLeuker AI operates at the agentic AI layer of fashion tech: trend forecasting AI, brand forecasting AI, supplier sourcing AI, and fashion task automation AI.
Explore Fashion Tech domainFashion innovation
Also known as: AI fashion innovation, Fashion innovation platform
Fashion innovation is the introduction of new methods, materials, technologies, or business models that change how fashion is researched, designed, produced, or distributed.
Past waves of fashion innovation include fast fashion, direct-to-consumer brands, sustainable materials (Mylo, Piñatex, recycled polyester), and digital fashion. The current wave is intelligence: McLeuker AI represents fashion innovation at the intelligence layer — replacing manual research and spreadsheet stitching with agentic AI workflows that produce stakeholder-ready deliverables end to end.
AI in fashion
Also known as: AI in the fashion industry, AI for fashion brands, AI for fashion
AI in fashion is the use of artificial intelligence — large language models, computer vision, multi-model routing, agentic workflows — to power fashion research, trend forecasting, brand intelligence, supplier sourcing, and end-to-end task automation.
Specific applications include AI runway analysis, AI fashion trend forecasting, AI brand forecasting, AI supplier and certification mapping, AI sustainability compliance (ESPR, CSRD), AI catwalk and fashion week intelligence, AI fashion design tools, and AI fashion task automation. McLeuker AI consolidates these into one fashion research and execution platform.
Fashion research and execution platform
Also known as: First AI fashion research platform, Top fashion research and execution platform, AI fashion research platform
A fashion research and execution platform is software that takes a fashion brief from prompt to finished deliverable autonomously — combining fashion-domain research with file-format-ready execution.
Outputs include Excel sourcing matrices, PDF trend reports, PowerPoint board decks, and Word brand briefs — every figure source-cited and traceable. McLeuker AI is the first platform built for this category. Earlier-generation fashion AI tools handle either research OR execution; McLeuker AI ships both in one agentic workflow.
AI fashion trend forecasting
Also known as: Trend forecasting AI, Fashion trend analysis AI, AI fashion trend analysis
AI fashion trend forecasting is the use of AI to analyse runway shows, social signals (Pinterest, TikTok, Instagram), retail data, and editorial sources to surface and quantify upcoming fashion trends.
McLeuker AI's trend forecasting engine quantifies trend velocity across 200+ fashion-week shows per season — Paris, Milan, London, New York, plus Copenhagen, Seoul, and Shanghai — cross-referenced with Pinterest pin velocity, TikTok hashtag growth, and retail availability. Outputs export to Excel + PDF as heatmaps, ranked tables, and source-cited narrative.
Try Trend Forecasting AIBrand forecasting AI
Also known as: Fashion brand forecasting AI, AI-driven brand forecasting, Fashion brand forecasting platform AI
Brand forecasting AI is AI-driven evaluation of a fashion brand's competitive positioning, market white space, consumer sentiment, and growth signals — used to inform brand strategy decisions.
McLeuker AI is a dedicated fashion brand forecasting platform. The brand intelligence module produces sourced competitive maps, white-space heatmaps, sentiment-trend curves, and growth-signal dashboards — exportable to PowerPoint and PDF for board and investor presentations.
Try Brand Forecasting AIFashion task automation
Also known as: AI fashion task automation, Fashion task automation platform
Fashion task automation is the use of AI to autonomously complete repeatable fashion-industry tasks — catalog work, product-spec audits, listing automation, retail intelligence, and assortment monitoring.
McLeuker AI's task automation module drives a sandboxed browser to complete operations that previously took half a day per task: SKU availability checks, stockout monitoring, price-drop alerts, certification-validation crawls, and lookbook spec sheets. Outputs are timestamped, screenshotted, and exportable.
Try Fashion Task AutomationAI supplier sourcing
Also known as: AI fashion sourcing, AI Tier-2 supplier mapping, AI Tier-3 supplier mapping
AI supplier sourcing is the use of AI to discover, verify, and rank fashion suppliers — mills, fabric houses, manufacturers, components — across Tier-1, Tier-2, and Tier-3 of the supply chain.
McLeuker AI cross-references trade directories, certification databases (GOTS, OEKO-TEX, BCI, GRS, Fair Trade), regulatory filings (ESPR Digital Product Passport), and trade press to produce Excel supplier matrices with MOQ, lead time, certifications, country, and contact metadata.
Try Sourcing AIFashion intelligence
Also known as: AI fashion intelligence, Fashion intelligence platform
Fashion intelligence is the structured, sourced, machine-readable layer of insight about the fashion industry — trends, brands, markets, suppliers, sustainability, culture — that powers strategy decisions.
Where generic business intelligence (BI) tools surface dashboards on whatever data you connect, fashion intelligence is specifically tuned to fashion's signals: runway taxonomies, supplier certifications, season cycles, fashion-week timelines, ESPR / CSRD regulatory deadlines. McLeuker AI is a fashion intelligence platform.
Multi-model AI for fashion
Also known as: Multi-model fashion AI, Multi-model routing fashion
Multi-model AI for fashion is an AI architecture that routes each task to the best frontier AI model rather than depending on a single model.
McLeuker AI routes between Kimi K3 (Moonshot — long-horizon reasoning + vision), Grok 4.5 (xAI — reasoning + editorial fashion work), Gemini 2.5 Flash (Google — grounded research), Qwen Image (DashScope — image generation), and Kimi K2.5 (cost-efficient execution + China-market intelligence). The router picks per task: real-time trend signals go to Grok, deep agentic execution to Kimi, citation grounding to Gemini.
ESPR + CSRD compliance AI
Also known as: ESPR compliance AI, CSRD fashion reporting AI, EU sustainability compliance AI
ESPR (EU Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation) and CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive) compliance AI is the application of AI to track and produce EU sustainability filings required of fashion brands operating in the European Union.
McLeuker AI tracks ESPR and CSRD requirements per product category and brand size, produces gap analyses against current supply-chain documentation, drafts compliance briefs aligned to GRI / ESRS frameworks, and exports the work as PDF + Excel + Word with cited primary sources.
Explore Sustainability domain
