How a solo founder used Codex and ChatGPT to launch a fashion brand without engineers | Yana Welinder

Yana Welinder is the solo founder of Yana Bana, an AI-native fashion brand built with AI as her technical co-founder, starting from hand-drawn sketches and ending with runway photos, CAD files for 3D printing, and a live Stripe-connected pre-order site—no engineers required. A former product leader, she brings an operator’s rigor to her creative process: her “fashion prompt” is a detailed spec covering silhouette, volume, fabric behavior, movement, and sound, and watching her use Codex plus computer use to navigate 3D design software that’s entirely new to her is a clarifying demo of what today’s toolset actually makes possible.What you’ll learn:How Yana uses a custom fashion prompt as a technical spec to get consistent, realistic, on-design outputsWhy ChatGPT Images 2.0 outperforms other models for fashion designHow she uses Codex plus computer use to operate CAD and fashion software she’s never personally learnedThe workflow for taking a garment from hand-drawn sketch to product photo, runway photo, and influencer shot in a single sessionHow she ran vendor outreach end to end using deep research and browser useHow she built a full e-commerce site with voting, databases, and Stripe integrationWhy she’s testing human patternmakers and Codex in parallel—Brought to you by:Merge—Connective infrastructure for production AIJira AI SDLC—Get your tokens’ worth with Jira—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Introducing Yana Welinder and Yana Bana(02:38) Tour of the Yana Bana site(05:20) The fashion prompt stack(07:39) Live demo: generating a jacket from a prompt in ChatGPT(10:01) Why Image Gen 2.0 beats other models(11:51) The “prompt as spec” principle(14:02) Iterating the design(17:12) Using Codex and computer use to build CAD files in 3D software(20:50) Vendor research, outreach emails, and Superhuman browser use(23:34) Building the full e-commerce site(27:40) Quick recap and what’s still hard(30:05) How Yana prompts when AI pushes back(31:15) Where to find Yana and how to vote on her garments—Tools referenced:• ChatGPT (Images 2.0): https://chat.openai.com• Codex (OpenAI): https://openai.com/codex• CLO 3D (fashion pattern software): https://www.clo3d.com• Vercel: https://vercel.com• GitHub: https://github.com• Stripe: https://stripe.com• Superhuman: https://superhuman.com—Other references:• Ruth Asawa: https://ruthasawa.com• SFMOMA (Ruth Asawa): https://www.sfmoma.org/artist/Ruth_Asawa/—Where to find Yana Welinder:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ywelinder/X: https://x.com/yanabanaWebsite: https://www.yanabana.com—Where to find Claire Vo:ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/Website: https://clairevo.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/X: https://x.com/clairevo—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].