Beautiful Inside and Out: How City Goddess & Goddiva Are Shaping the Future of Occasionwear with AI, Craftsmanship, and Sustainability

by City Goddess on Sep 08, 2025

At City Goddess and Goddiva, we believe fashion is about more than what you wear. It’s about confidence, identity, responsibility, and artistry. Behind every dress is a story of creativity, craft, and now, technology.

That story was recently spotlighted in Boutique Magazine (August 2025), where our Lead Product Developer and Garment Technologist, Akshi Shah Joshi, revealed how we combine traditional garment craftsmanship with AI-driven innovation to create occasionwear that is not only beautiful, but also precise, sustainable, and empowering.

This philosophy runs through every collection we design, and Akshi’s career journey reflects why she is uniquely placed to bring it to life.

Akshi’s Journey: From NIFT to City Goddess

Akshi’s journey into fashion began at India’s National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT, New Delhi), where she trained in fashion design. From there, she worked hands-on in design, pattern-making, hand embroidery, and production. Early roles with fashion houses in India, alongside factory visits in China and partnerships with UK manufacturers, gave her a global understanding of garment-making.

Her career took a pivotal turn when she worked closely with British-Nigerian designer Walé Adeyemi MBE. As his production manager, Akshi was responsible for delivering collections for brands like B-side, New County, and Story of Lola, supplying to major retailers including ASOS, Urban Outfitters, Topshop, and Zalando. It was here she learned a powerful lesson: love the product you create, immerse yourself in every detail, and balance both cost and customer comfort.

These experiences, combined with her Master’s degree in Fashion Marketing & Management at UCA, Epsom, shaped her unique perspective: blending creativity with technical precision. Since joining City Goddess in 2019, Akshi has brought this ethos to every collection, ensuring each piece is both innovative and impeccably made.

What Makes City Goddess & Goddiva Different?

What excites Akshi most about her role is the creative freedom and the appetite for risk within City Goddess and Goddiva. Unlike many fashion companies where “safe” designs dominate, our brands encourage bold ideas that stand out in a crowded market. But what truly sets us apart is the obsession with fit. For us, a design doesn’t succeed unless it makes the wearer feel confident. Akshi explains that conversations in the design room are never just about aesthetics—they’re about the emotions our clothes evoke.

This emotional connection is rare in fashion, and it’s a principle that has helped shape our identity: fashion that doesn’t just look good, but makes people feel special.

From Concept to Customer: The Design Process

Every collection starts with inspiration, but inspiration alone is not enough. Akshi keeps her trend files constantly updated, drawing from colour forecasts, fabrics, and prints. She works hand-in-hand with our Design Director to turn these ideas into viable collections.

Once the moodboards are finalised, sketches become technical specifications for pattern makers. Early prototypes are developed and rigorously tested in fit sessions, where Akshi personally checks proportions, fabric suitability, and overall impact. A successful style often inspires a mini-collection, where production colours and variations are developed.

Her technical expertise ensures nothing is left to chance. From preparing detailed tech packs for suppliers, to approving pre-production and shipment samples, Akshi’s input guarantees consistency and quality. Her approach includes sending pictorial feedback to suppliers, ensuring clarity across regions and cultures—saving time, reducing sampling waste, and improving collaboration.

Technical Details that Make the Difference

Often, it’s the smallest design tweaks that have the greatest impact on customer satisfaction and return rates. Akshi highlights several key examples:

Adding elastic or shirring at the waist ensures flexibility and comfort across body types.

Designing open-back necklines that sit just above the bra strap allows women to wear bras with confidence while still enjoying elegant backless looks.

For sleeveless styles, careful shaping of the armhole highlights the most flattering part of the arm, boosting confidence without discomfort.

Curve collections are customised with adjusted splits, proportions, and lengths to flatter fuller figures.

These technical decisions may sound minor, but they create massive differences in wearability and return rates. As Akshi puts it:

Fashion’s return problem is one of the industry’s biggest challenges—financially and environmentally. Returns cost billions, waste tonnes of fabric, and create vast CO₂ emissions from reverse logistics.

By focusing on fit, construction, and versatility, City Goddess and Goddiva are tackling this issue head-on, offering buyers and customers garments that are less likely to be sent back and more likely to be loved.

How AI Is Transforming Our Design Room

The integration of AI and digital tools has completely reshaped our workflow. AI-driven tools analyse customer preferences and market trends, helping forecast styles, colours, and fits that are most likely to succeed. Technical drawings can now be generated before physical samples, cutting waste and speeding up decision-making.

Together with our IT team, we’ve automated tasks like tech pack creation and sample tracking, freeing the design team to focus on creativity. For buyers, this means more relevant collections, improved fit consistency, and faster delivery from concept to store. For the environment, it means reduced waste through fewer samples and smarter production.

🌍 McKinsey predicts AI could boost fashion profits by $275 billion in the next five years.

Our Approach: Digital prototyping, smarter fits, timeless designs

Sustainability runs through every stage of our process. By consolidating shipments, reducing unnecessary samples, and using digital feedback loops with suppliers, we minimise fabric waste, trims, and carbon emissions. For us, sustainability isn’t just about eco-friendly packaging. It’s about rethinking processes to eliminate inefficiency and waste at every level.

Bestsellers Akshi Has Loved Working On

Some of our bestselling pieces are especially close to Akshi’s heart. From developing custom watercolour prints that became top-sellers, to adjusting proportions in curve collections that customers rave about, Akshi has left her mark on pieces that embody both creativity and technical mastery.

She explains that the joy is in seeing a concept evolve into a finished product: from inspiration boards, through fabric testing, to final adjustments that make a garment fit just right. For Akshi, bestsellers are proof that customers feel the difference these details make.

Here are a few bestsellers where Akshi’s expertise and passion played a key role.

City Goddess and Goddiva stand at the intersection of art, innovation, and responsibility. With Akshi’s guiding mantra, we are committed to designing occasionwear that balances beauty, sustainability, and precision.