About Shanley
Hi — thanks for stopping by.
I'm Shanley Suganda, a design executive based in New York.
In 25+ years designing across denim, knits, wovens, and outerwear, I found the thing I'm actually best at: walking into chaos and leaving behind a system that runs itself. Broken calendars, misfiring teams, processes that fail quietly — I find the real problem underneath, then build the organized solution.
Today I'm Senior Creative Director for Lee & Dickies men's. I'm also the founder of Shanley.ai, a suite of AI-powered fashion design tools in daily production use.
Outside of work, my hobby has a passport: I'm a scuba diver, and I take it seriously — 86 countries so far, and in most of them I've tried to get underwater.
Proficiencies
Design
- Adobe Illustrator
- Adobe Photoshop
- Adobe Premiere Pro
- Adobe Acrobat
- Figma
- Excel
PLM
- Flex
- Centric
- Be Product
AI Tooling
- Claude Code
- ChatGPT
- Gemini
- Generative video & imagery
- Agentic workflows
- Automation pipelines
My Story
I grew up in my parents' garment factory. Long before I studied fashion design, I learned what a production floor sounded like, how products were made, and how expensive a small mistake could become.
That perspective shaped everything that followed. For more than 25 years, I've led design and product development for some of the largest names in American apparel. Today I lead design for billion-dollar denim and workwear businesses, managing the entire product journey from trend research and concept development to buy meetings and factory partnerships across ten countries.
Along the way, I helped grow a European retailer's knitwear business by 25%, designed nearly 40% of Macy's Tasso Elba private label, taught fashion design and denim construction at Academy of Art University for eight years, and built a consulting studio helping fashion startups bring products to market.
The pattern has always been the same.
I build apparel businesses.
Design is my tool. Business growth is the outcome.
After decades in the industry, I realized the biggest obstacle wasn't creativity. It was everything surrounding it. Designers were spending countless hours writing tech packs, reviewing BOMs, updating spreadsheets, managing product data, and repeating work that software should have handled years ago.
So instead of waiting for someone else to solve those problems, I built the tools I wished I'd had throughout my career. Today I've built AI products that support the entire product development process, from trend research and design exploration to technical documentation and product launch. Every product came from real problems I experienced while leading design teams.
No software company.
No development agency.
Just me, Claude Code, Codex, curiosity, and thousands of hours learning to build.
Today I work with fashion brands in two ways.
First, I help businesses improve product development, from calendars and workflows to sourcing, costing, and operational efficiency.
Second, I build AI systems that remove repetitive work, allowing creative teams to spend less time managing spreadsheets and more time designing great products.
I'm still the same Creative Director I was twenty-five years ago. The difference is that AI has become another design tool. My goal hasn't changed.
Build better products.
Help businesses grow.
Give creative people more time to create.
Shanley Suganda
Creative Director • AI Builder • Founder, Shanley.ai
I'll bring the system.
shanley.suganda@gmail.com linkedin.com/in/shanleysuganda ↗