Fashion Brands Are About to Find Their Next Growth Market: Wearing Humanoid Robots
Robots need clothes for the same reason as humans, the way they dress changes the way humans feel about them.
The exposed metal humanoid reads like cold industrial machinery. The same machine dressed in a tailored concierge uniform reads like helpful, calm, and premium. Hotels, hospitals, shopping malls, and restaurants are the first big buyers, and they are already dressing their employees to match their brand. They will want robots to be like them.
Clothing also solves real engineering problems. Layers of soft fabric muffle vehicle noise, add safety around joints, protect sensitive nerves and electrical skin, control heat, and survive repeated cleanings in places like hospitals. A bare metal robot in the living room or maternity ward is problematic. The wearer is not.
Jensen Huang, head of NVIDIA, put the business case on Joe Rogan’s podcast in December 2025. People will want their robot to look different from yours, so the apparel industry is building to make that happen. Brett Adcock, founder and CEO of Figure AI, made a similar call this month, predicting luxury labels, smart fabrics, seasonal drops, and matching clothes for a human and his robot.
The beginnings are already there. RobotsWear creates modular clothing designed for robotics, with fabrics for sensors, temperature control, and uniforms targeted at homes, hospitals, and hospitality. OIDFIT is taking pre-orders for protective, personalized clothing. Japan’s Rocket Road has been doing robot fashion since about 2021.
Robot makers aren’t waiting either. 1X Technologies is sending its home robot NEO Gamma wearing a 3D-knit nylon bodysuit and soundproofing shoes, adding protective gear, and allowing it to assemble in the living room instead of the factory. The new Figure model, Figure 03, uses removable, washable fabric layers instead of hard plastic shells, designed by fashion designer Janis Sne, with unbroken versions of industrial work.
It has already walked the runway, more than once. The 2025 World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing opened in August with a humanoid robot show called Celestial Couture, featuring 12 custom robot costumes directed by Yu Yimeng, a teacher at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. Unitree’s G1 modeled custom looks for Shanghai Fashion Week. Noetix Robotics’ N2 walked Paris Fashion Week wearing a vintage coat and pearls. Seoul is hosting its own Robot Fashion Show in October 2025 alongside the IEEE Humanoids conference.
Academic work is growing. A 2026 framework called the Robot Fashion Psychology Model, developed by Irvin Steve Cardenas and colleagues and presented at HRI 2026, formalizes how clothing shapes the trust and perception of robots. It builds on a 2021 paper, “What Robots Need in Clothes,” and warns of “honest washing,” using user-friendly design to hide what a robot can and can’t do.
The math is the part you need to be aware of. The overall humanoid robot market is expected to reach nearly $181.9 billion by 2035, with virtual machines already entering service roles: Figure, Tesla’s Optimus, Agility’s Digit, Apptronik’s Apollo, and Unitree’s G1. A piece of clothing on top of that is a high-margin repeat game, because one expensive robot can wear many clothes throughout its working life, the way a phone gets a new case or a car is customized.
