The Future of Fashion is Sustainable...and Digital
Fast fashion has been popularized by the idea that we always need new and more. This ideal is reinforced by the standard social media sets with the “purchase, Instagram, return” mentality that many influencers have adopted. Their influence might have an actual effect on the life cycle of clothing, with statistics showing one in six young people won’t wear an outfit again once it has been posted on social media.
This leads to mass overconsumption and overproduction of fast fashion with nearly three-fifths of all clothing ending up in landfills or incinerators within a year of being produced.
More often than not, we buy clothes with the intention of wearing them once to take pictures for social media or online platforms so why don’t we make clothes specifically for this in a way that is sustainable for our environment?
A sustainable alternative to keep up with this constant need for new clothes for digital content is well...digital fashion.
Digital fashion is made using pixels, not textiles and computers, not sweatshops.
These 3D digital designs can be purchased through online digital-only marketplaces like The Fabricant, DressX, and XR Couture, which have launched in recent months as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic. These online retailers are aiming to be the FarFetch or Ssense of the digital world by providing a similar luxury shopping experience - only digital. Such marketplaces as these are the first of their kind to sell completely non-physical fashion from various virtual artists.
When customers purchase a 3D design, they are prompted to submit a photo of themselves for the virtual tailors of these marketplaces to “dress” using the digital design purchased. The turnaround time for the customer to receive back their “dressed” image is usually within 24 hours of purchase, which beats having to wait for a package to arrive in the mail.
I had the pleasure to speak with Subham Jain, the founder and creative director of the digital retailer XR Couture. XR Couture is the world’s first international digital fashion platform, offering a collection of digital clothing, footwear, and accessories. XR Couture was founded last year during the height of the pandemic with Jain stating “This is when we saw influencers not being able to create new content or only had their old photos and weren’t able to do anything new with them.” Now eight months into the launch, XR’s clientele has been growing day by day, with more and more people being interested in getting ahead of the “trend” of shopping digital.
I asked Jain if digital fashion has at all changed his personal shopping habits, being that he is not a social media influencer. His answer was a no, “because digital clothing cannot replace physical clothing, but it definitely has changed the way I look at social media right now.” This led me to ask him what the use of digital fashion is outside of Instagram or social media. "Digital fashion is a revolution in itself that is right now”, said Jain. “With things like NFTs, virtual personas, and virtual twins becoming increasingly popular, there are tons and tons of potential uses outside of social media.” He shared the point that digital fashion has been used in video games “since forever” with games like Fortnight that have been making millions off of their digital skins. Jain shared his thoughts that we soon will be seeing digital fashion in the AR world through things like AR glasses adding “probably even on a zoom call like we are now.”
With NFTs becoming increasingly popular I asked Jain if XR Couture uses cryptocurrency on blockchain to certify the designs customers purchase as NFTs. As of now, the designs on XR Couture are just for photographs says Jain. “You are buying it with USD currency, not on the blockchain, not with cryptocurrency, - just regular cash, not allowing them to be resold digitally as NFTs.” He explained that trying to use a digital design as an NFT for other platforms like video games is a completely different marketplace than buying them retail. However, platforms like Demeterialized can help with this process.
Idiat Shiole, who goes by HADEEART, is a Nigerian-based emerging freelance virtual designer whose work is sold through the digital fashion marketplace DressX. Her work is inspired by African society and the Nigerian fabric Ankara, which she elaborated on when I had the chance to speak with her. “For me, it was important to showcase this in my clothing from a unique perspective based on the cuts and structure of our traditional garments instead of just the usual Ankara prints and styles.” It is clear her background in textile design is shown through her work.
“Digital Fashion for me was an intersection between art and textile and technology,” says Shiole. After working as a fashion illustrator she wanted her designs to have “more life in them”, which led her to work at a VR/AR company as an illustrator. There she saw what this technology was used for, pushing her to do further research.
Shiole recalled, “Back then I would draw my fashion ideas and print while wearing the (AR) headset and using a Tilt Brush application.” She then ended up researching 3D and what it could mean for fashion. “Then I came across Marvelous Designer which is also CLO3D software and decided to quit my job and give these a go in my life. Since then, I have been pushing further on these (3D digital designs) because it gave me the freedom to self-expression and also allowed me unlimited possibilities.” Shiole is self-taught on 3D design via Youtube, Udemy, and tutorials from the software companies themselves.
“Digital fashion’s future is collaborative, creative, and cooperative,” says Shiole. It can be used for fitting, virtual showcase, Virtual Fashion gaming and also testing out cloth before purchase and means of reducing fabric waste and pollution caused by the fashion industry. Digital fashion is not limited to just the 3D technology alone; it cuts across immersive technology as well and these are what we would experience soon.
She says “It will enable people to create several digital identities and express who they are and what they desire (outside of the physical world). My goal is to inspire people to think about fashion in a new way which has always been a direction for me.” Very soon we won't be thinking about our physical body alone, but rather think about digital representations of ourselves.
When asked if her designs were all sold as NFTs, she said not all of her work, but some. “As we know, NFT’s role in the fashion industry is the creation of digital fashion that can be traded and authenticated upon the blockchain.” She thinks this is one of the ways towards sustainability by having value and multiple-use in digital art.
With the fashion industry going digital as well as our lives, it is inevitable that digital fashion is the future for sustainable fashion.
Many brands have been experimenting in digital fashion due to the effects of the pandemic, the need for sustainable, ethical fashion, and the growing popularity in crypto NFTs. Virtual Rags is different from digital retailers like XR Couture that sell designs ready to “wear”. Virtual Rags is a digital design studio, with over nineteen thousand Instagram followers, that mainly provides 3D modeling, digital pattern making, and motion design services in the digital fashion field.
When asked about the creative and design process Roman concluded, “To put things simply, a perfect process looks something like this: we first receive and review real photos or digital mock-ups of items. We also discuss details such as a creative idea for the final video, fabrics, fitting style, and measurements with our partner. Based on this info, we estimate what it will cost us to create, taking time, software fees, and designer checks into consideration. After we agree, the process on our side starts, on which we always update our clients, to make adjustments before the final rendering,”
The prices for these services are somewhat custom based on design but some of the basic rates include 80$ for a hoodie model, 60$ for a t-shirt, 200$ for a pair of sneakers with the turnaround time usually being ten to twelve business days. Not only is the production cost and time reduced for these digital samples, but also the carbon footprint, by eliminating any and all physical needs.
After speaking with Roman of Virtual Rags, I learned the part this company plays in bridging the gap for companies who want to dive into the digital world of fashion. He shared that their team offers the development of 3D models for all kinds of items for purposes ranging from marketing to actual manufacturing, custom tailoring, or 3D printing. Adding, “We have started our journey almost exactly a year ago from today and since then have been honored and blessed to build creative relationships with brands and individual designers from all over the world.”
He shared that the pandemic has helped to shed light on businesses like his own, stating “It (the pandemic) is basically just a precedent that showed individuals and companies how actually close we are to having 2 separate lives, one of which is a full-blown life in a virtual reality, which was inevitable in many ways.” This is opening new layers and possibilities for marketing and customer-brand communication, with Virtual Rags having already worked with hundreds of brands with their latest designer commission being for Telfar.
When asked if he sees designer brands selling digital-only designs available for purchase through their own websites in the future, Roman replied “Yes! totally”, “We already talk to some luxury staples that are planning on launching platforms that will have their virtual-only assets sold, with the future possibility of redeeming them for a physical item. And there’s more to come.”
Roman shared the main use of digital fashion outside of having an unexplored creative outlet with no physical boundaries and something cool to post on social media is connected to sustainability and preservation of nature. “ It allows producing on-demand, not wasting tons of fabrics and labor on producing numerous “test” samples of clothes that then usually are just thrown away. And much more comes out of that like transportation, which leads to reduction of air, water pollution, etc.” He added, “We’re striving to help companies make fashion out of everything and start treating their product as unique and important parts of our lives, not just fast-interchanging things that grow in quantity and die in necessity at the same time.”
“We should all re-think our views on consuming and value what we have more.”
This is why it is vital with digital fashion, that creativity is validated more than the validation from social media, in order to not have these tech advances turn into a different way of over-consumption, which sustainable fashion is trying hard to combat. As long as there are programmers to code the designs, the supply of digital and virtual clothes is unlimited, which is why we need to remain conscious and be the ones to limit ourselves to head in the direction of sustainability.