What is flat-lay photography?

Flat-lay photography is a product-photography style in which clothing is laid flat on a clean surface and shot directly from above. It's fast, cheap and consistent, which makes it the default way most fashion brands capture new garments — no model, studio or styling required.

The trade-off is that flat lays show the garment, not the fit. Shoppers find it harder to picture how a piece drapes or sizes on a body, which is why on-model imagery typically converts better on product pages.

That gap is exactly why flat lays are the ideal input for AI virtual try-on: a clean flat-lay photo on a plain background carries all the colour, pattern and shape information an AI needs to render the garment on a photorealistic model in seconds.