DIGITAL FASHION Tried and tested
ELLE’S EXECUTIVE EDITOR (DIGITAL) NATASHA BIRD TRIES ON PIXELLATED PIECES FOR SIZE
Major brands are already adopting the idea, which shows promise. We’ll be able to quickly determine authenticity, perhaps putting an end to the £1.4 trillion annually that’s fed into fashion fakes. Bottega Veneta has introduced NFC (near-field communication) tags into its bags for exactly this purpose, putting digital twins within grasping distance. Breitling watches already have full digital passports running on the blockchain, which can tell you about the watch’s care requirements and will soon let you see estimated resale value for future peer-to-peer trading. Digital twin NFTs may also be able to let you trace previous repairs, learn about responsible disposal, or confirm that Madonna did indeed once own this very coat. There are some ‘just for fun’ elements to the idea, too: Nike’s ‘Cryptokicks’ will let you breed your trainers’ NFT with somebody else’s, creating a cute, hybrid sneaker child that you can decide to have made physically, should you want to.
But despite all this novelty and usefulness, I worry about what we stand to lose. It seems to me that the value of every item will be immortalised according to a specific set of standards, involving age, provenance, restoration and resale price. By tethering it permanently to its digital passport, your designer blazer will only be worth the 12 years it has existed, plus one original garment bag minus two seam alterations. But in the digital future of fashion, is our value system always to be based on the cold statistics of tradeability?
What about sentimentality and the more uncategorisable aspects of our emotional connections with clothes? I have a Gucci 1955 horsebit shoulder bag; a gift to myself after the birth of my son. It was a transactional acknowledgement of, to quote Radiohead, ‘everything in its right place’: career, finances, partner, child and personal fulfilment. I have had real feelings about virtual clothes, but they could never come close to my relationship with this bag. Just looking at it sparks immeasurable joy. I smile when I pick it up as it reminds me of all the goodness of the past few years, even as we’ve waded through tough times. I can’t put a number on that worth; you can’t encode those feelings in data. My Gucci bag’s online passport would say its value has depreciated over time as I’ve taken it on tequila-fuelled nights out and been clumsy with my spaghetti. It couldn’t possibly communicate that this is my life’s emotional zenith in bag form.
I have a green velvet jacket of my grandma’s. She was an actress, and I have visions of her treading the boards in it – and I look for stains that betray the parties after the performances. I don’t want to know the facts. A mixture of memory and imagination is what makes it magical. Dressx and Breitling have both insisted to me that blockchain is the future of heritage: you’ll be able to pass on your heirlooms via your digital wallet and, even better, they’ll continue to exist long after the physical item has disintegrated and gone, making memories like these eternal rather than ephemeral. But I feel like there’s a beauty in death, too. An important ritual is involved when savouring something that is taking its last gasps, even if we’re talking about a jacket or a bag.
There is genius and workmanship in digital fashion. I can endorse the idea that mainstream brands will launch ‘screenwear’ lines in the same way that they have festive collections and resortwear. Maybe virtually
I’ll finally be able to afford a Saks Potts ‘Foxy’ coat. Avatars have huge worth if they allow us to express ourselves more wildly and freely than we sometimes feel able to do physically. Perhaps this is me subscribing to the idea of decentralisation. But it strikes me that there is still significance in the separation between our physical and our digital existences.
Some people love virtual reality so much that they’d prefer to experience everything through technology’s filter. And, certainly for fashion, digital twins might take us in that direction, with each physical item of clothing becoming inextricably entwined with its metaverse counterpart. But I am concerned that, if we do this, we risk blockchain value occluding any other kind of meaning our possessions might have for us. I prefer to think that we can immerse ourselves in the gorgeous fantasy of digital fashion while also having a life away from the screen, in which we protect the esoteric and deeply personal relationship we have with clothes.
You can be a Roblox squirrel in Off-White jeans, showing off at a virtual concert, and later that day delve into a box at the back of the wardrobe to hold your grandmother’s jacket in silent reverence.