Does H&M Have Virtual Try-On? Its NeXR Pilot and Google Partnership

Most retailer virtual try-on stories follow one clean timeline: a company builds a tool, ships it, done. H&M's is messier, and more useful precisely because of that. It ran a hardware-heavy in-store pilot years before AI image generation was good enough to replace it, then showed up again as a launch partner once a platform built the AI version instead.

Does H&M have virtual try-on?

Not as a single, unified feature on hm.com or in the H&M app. What exists is two separate initiatives, run five years apart, aimed at different problems. One was a physical scanner in a few German stores. The other is a line item inside somebody else's AI shopping tool. Neither is H&M running its own try-on the way Zara or Zalando now do on their own apps.

What was H&M's in-store fitting room with NeXR?

• H&Mbeyond, H&M Germany's innovation arm, began working with NeXR Technologies in January 2021.
• NeXR installed its Fusion III body scanner in two Berlin stores and one Hamburg store, opening for a test phase on September 30, 2021.
• A shopper stepped into the scanner once and got a personal avatar built free from their exact body measurements, a digital twin rather than a generic mannequin.
• NeXR's AvatarCloud Fashion app then let that shopper try on roughly 30 pieces from H&M's new collection on their own avatar, in store or from home during the pilot window.
• The pilot ran from October 14 to November 6, 2021. NeXR announced a comparable partnership with H&M Thailand in September 2022.

That is a real, working system, not a concept video. It is also a lot of infrastructure for a three-week test: a body scanner bolted into a store, an avatar-hosting app, and staff trained to walk customers through it. Nothing in H&M's own public communications or NeXR's later announcements describes the Berlin and Hamburg pilot as having become a standard, ongoing part of H&M's stores.

How is H&M involved in Google's AI try-on?

Google's own blog announced AI virtual try-on for apparel on June 14, 2023. The launch lineup was small and specific: Anthropologie, Everlane, H&M, and LOFT, covering women's tops for US shoppers, rendered on a set of real models spanning sizes XXS to 4XL. A shopper tapped a Try On badge on Search and picked whichever model looked closest to them, since the original version worked from a fixed model set rather than the shopper's own photo.

That mechanic changed later. Google has since updated the feature so a shopper can generate a try-on from their own selfie instead of choosing a stand-in model, and expanded coverage well beyond the original women's-tops scope. For a fuller explanation of how Google's and Perplexity's built-in try-on tools work today, see how AI shopping search added virtual try-on.

What can you actually try on today?

1. The working option is Google, not H&M directly. An H&M product needs a Try On badge inside Google Search or Google Shopping for this to apply, and coverage depends on Google's own catalog indexing, not a setting H&M controls on a per-item basis.
2. It only works on garments Google has actually indexed for the feature, so it will not cover every H&M item, every market, or every category.
3. The 2021 NeXR pilot is not part of this. It required a physical scanner visit at one of three specific stores during a three-week window that ended in 2021.
4. There is no public evidence of a current H&M-run try-on tool living on hm.com or inside the H&M app itself.

What does this mean for a store outside H&M?

H&M's path shows how expensive it is to own this experience end to end. The 2021 pilot needed real hardware in real stores. The 2023 partnership needed a seat at Google's launch table, which is not something a smaller retailer gets to request. This blog has already covered how Zara and Zalando built their own in-house try-on tools and what Walmart's Zeekit-based try-on covers; H&M's case adds a third pattern, a retailer that tried the hardware route first, shelved it, then rode a platform's own rollout instead of building a second in-house version.

• A platform partnership is not something you can apply for on your own timeline. Google chose its four 2023 launch partners. A store waiting for the same invitation has no control over whether or when it arrives.
• In-store hardware pilots are expensive and hard to keep running. A body scanner, an avatar app, and staff training add up fast for a test that covered three stores for three weeks.
• A store's own product pages skip both problems. Virtual try-on installed directly on a Shopify or WooCommerce storefront does not depend on a scanner budget or an invitation from a search engine.

Corlen renders a try-on directly from the shopper's own uploaded photo, on the store's own product pages, in a kiosk, or through the developer API, without a body scanner or a platform launch slot as a prerequisite.

See it on your own photo: try Corlen for free, no account needed for a first result. For a store weighing options, how to choose a virtual try-on app covers what actually matters beyond a feature list.