Midjourney is excellent at mood and composition, but apparel design needs clarity, not just atmosphere. If you use the same long prompt style people use for fantasy scenes or ad visuals, you usually get beautiful images that are difficult to print.
What to include
Focus on subject, placement, line quality, and print behavior. Terms like screen print style, bold outlines, limited color palette, centered composition, and transparent background help more than abstract adjectives.
Prompt examples
Minimal outdoor: vintage hiking emblem, pine trees and sun, one-color vector style, centered t-shirt graphic, bold contour lines, clean negative space, no mockup.
Streetwear graphic: cyber tiger head, high contrast black and red, poster-inspired apparel graphic, symmetrical composition, thick linework, no extra background elements.
What to avoid
Avoid asking for fabric folds, model photography, and highly realistic lighting when you only need the artwork itself. Those details waste generations and make cleanup harder.
The best Midjourney prompts for apparel are not the longest ones. They are the prompts that clearly describe what should survive into the final print file.