Reality check
The pandemic changed the way we experience fashion – with virtual runway shows and clothes we’ll only ever wear online taking over. But, in real life, is there a future with clothes that don’t physically exist? Whitney Bauck investigates.
With virtual runway shows and clothes we’ll only ever wear online taking over, is there a future with clothes that don’t physically exist?
Anifa Mvuemba didn’t set out to revolutionise fashion with the digital runway show she created for her brand Hanifa in May 2020. The designer, who was born in Kenya to Congolese parents and moved to the US as a three-year-old, was simply looking to creatively display her latest collection in the face of pandemic-imposed gathering restrictions.
But her show, which featured animated 3D renderings of clothing walking down a digital runway seemingly by themselves, was unlike anything the fashion world had ever seen. The presentation went viral, and Mvuemba officially cemented her place in fashion history.
Though her instinct toward the digital is what set Mvuemba apart, she’s ultimately less of an outlier than a harbinger of where fashion is heading. In the past year, Balenciaga presented its autumn/winter ’21/’22 collection in a video game, H&M and Simone Rocha launched their collaboration in the form of an augmented reality (AR) pop-up book, while Gucci launched its first digital-only sneaker for AR settings, the Virtual 25. They followed on the heels of other digital developments in recent years, including the rise of CGI influencers like Lil Miquela.
According to Simon Windsor, whose agency Dimension Studio was behind the Balenciaga and H&M initiatives, this move towards increasing digitisation isn’t likely to fade soon.
“The pandemic required brands to fast-forward things that were already on their roadmap, because they needed to,” he says. “I don’t think that that’s going to go away. We are at the dawn of a new era.”
It’s not hard to see what he means. Beyond runway shows, the design process is being revolutionised as the 3D modelling technology that Hanifa used on her runway renders physical sample-making obsolete. Samples that once had to be shipped around the world, made and remade to get just the right fit or colour or fabric, can now be altered by designers with the click of a button.
Even what it means to ‘wear’ clothing is being reimagined as digital-only fashion starts to make serious headway. The gaming community is where this idea first got off the ground: players of Fortnite and League of Legends shell out millions each year for in-game ‘skins’ to wear, sometimes designed by the likes of Louis Vuitton. The demand for these skins is so high that Fortnite’s fashion industry earned $4 billion in 2018.
Increasingly, the idea of digital-only fashion is also picking up steam outside of games. Companies like Rtfkt and The Fabricant, the latter of which previously collaborated with Tommy Hilfiger, are designing clothing that’s only ever meant to exist digitally. Their pieces can be ‘worn’ on social media, which might seem like a crazy thing to pay for until you think about how many people buy physical outfits to wear once, post pictures of on Instagram, and then never wear again.
At Australian Fashion Week in June, The Fabricant also launched Digi_Couture, an experience that allowed attendees to ‘try on’ a digital couture piece designed in collaboration with Toni Maticevski. After decades of attendees viewing couture from a distance on the runway, the ability to wear digital garments represents a genuine innovation in the way showgoers might engage with designer creations moving forward.
Digital-only pieces also allow fashion designers to get in on the recent craze around non-fungible tokens or NFTs, digital collectibles that have sent the art world into a frenzy. Using a digital ledger known as a blockchain, which records ownership and provenance securely, these pieces’ exclusivity is assured (paralleling certificates of provenance in fine art) and they sell for couture prices. The Fabricant recently sold an NFT dress for $12,600. Meanwhile, Hong Kong-based platform BNV is looking to become the Farfetch of digital fashion by creating a luxury NFT shopping experience.
Many of the major players in this digital fashion space cite sustainability concerns as their raison d’être. After all, clothes that only exist online will never end up in a landfill or pollute a river in Bangladesh with toxic dyes. According to The Fabricant, creating a digital T-shirt results in a 97 per cent carbon saving when compared to its physical counterpart.
But digital-only doesn’t automatically mean better for the planet, cautions Dutch data scientist Alex de Vries, who runs the site Digiconomist. NFTs in particular can have a shockingly large carbon footprint because of those aforementioned sophisticated blockchain systems. These rely on technology that processes large amounts of data, which in turn needs powerful computers that ultimately rely on electricity from fossil fuels. According to one estimate, creating an average NFT is equivalent to driving “500 miles in a typical American gasoline-powered car”.
“If you put something on such a system, it will have a pretty massive carbon footprint, even if it’s just a digital image,” says De Vries.
Still, there might be a promising sustainable future in digital fashion if it’s disconnected from energy-intensive blockchain formats. That’s a big if for now, but many companies are banking on it.
Alongside the environmental impacts, it’s clear that the advent of digital fashion could have other major ramifications. It’s already changing how clothes are designed and fitted with 3D modelling software, and how new styles are introduced and shopped for with virtual runways and stores. It even has the potential to change our understanding of the ‘places’ we dress for, pointing to a future where more of our work and play exists in the metaverse, an immersive virtual universe that we’ll still likely wear clothes to walk around in.
And while it has the potential to upend the status quo around exclusivity – digital fashion makes room for a range of body types and can be easily accessed outside established fashion capitals – it could also drive a greater desire for ever-more-expensive exclusive styles that only one person can ‘own’, even if just as a digital file.
But perhaps the biggest question digital fashion raises is existential: if fashion is no longer tied to physical needs like protection from the elements or constrained by physical realities like gravity, what might it become?
As far as The Fabricant’s Michaela Larosse is concerned, the openendedness of that question is what makes the space so exciting. “Fashion is an emotional experience, and you don’t need physicality for that,” she says. “Digital fashion is about trying on an exciting garment that couldn’t exist in the real world … it creates new possibilities for self-expression.”
“Digital fashion is about trying on an exciting garment that couldn’t exist in the real world”