Digital Fashion Is Not Mainstream Fashion. Are We Too Early?
Let’s face Reality. “Which one?” one might ask.
Never in the timeline of my two decade long fashion career have I witnessed this level and upsurge of revolutionary innovations and creative output as I have seen and experienced in the last 19 months as writer of fashion’s new iteration: that of Technology and Virtual Fashion. The new industry’s insiders address it as fashion’s evolution. These innovations are not future spacesuit designs, but experiments and solutions to redesign traditional fashion experiences and to address the failings of the traditional industry. (Dive deeper here.)
Although digital fashion announced itself more than five years ago, and iconic fashion houses and brands like Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger, Diesel, and Nike have entered digital waters bringing metaverse fashion for our avatars, most mainstream fashion consumers know Digital Fashion as e-commerce fashion.
Are we, its proponents, living in a holographic bubble?
I would like to think not.
Virtual Fashion has gradually garnered more utility-driven visibility than just curious eyeballs. Fashion tech tools like AR and AI are integrated into the traditional industry’s design, production, and retail sectors. Consumers avail of Virtual Try-ons and Personalized Shopping experiences offered by mainstream e-commerce platforms like Amazon and Stitch Fix using these technologies.
International fashion weeks have welcomed Digital Fashion onto their ramps. Still celebrating its markedly pronounced presence at London, New York, Paris, and Amsterdam fashion weeks last year, Digital Fashion has already smoked the runways of New York, Paris, and Milan this February.
However …
I’m curious, but I’m a designer, and that’s such a hands-on task. I get so tactile with the technique and so involved in the actual draping. [The creative process] is very manual and I love to do it myself.
- Marina Moscone
Fashion creators and experts from the traditional industry exhibit apprehensions about employing technology in their work culture.
Understandable. Completely. I did too.
Fashion is, and has been, a tactile experience. The feel of luxury or casual comes with the touch of silk and denim. Virtual Fashion is a visual experience of that luxury or casual wear, and by nature, it can impart fantastical and surreal proportions to the experience.
The question is, are we excited to ‘wear’ intangibility? Would we choose to dress with virtual earrings for an online meeting?
A valid argument could be - you cannot wear a digital T-shirt in real life expecting everybody to use their phone screens or Vision Pros to see you in the virtual garment. This is an enhanced fashion play. It is fun. We need accents like these; they differentiate fashion from clothing.
On a practical note, one of the principal utilities of Digital Fashion in the tangible world is its inherent nature to be a sustainable solution for the catastrophic global waste contributed by the physical fashion industry. Few traditional industry leaders choose to prioritize the issue on their agendas. Human effort and material waste is expected when designing and creating prototypes of physical fashion. Yet, most choose not to employ technology to drastically effect a change. Perhaps the consequences of this waste feel insignificant when compared with the fear of machines taking over our creative and analytical faculties.
This is a sweet spot for a reminder that MACHINES INFILTRATE OUR CAPABILITIES ONLY IF, AND AS MUCH AS WE ALLOW THEM TO. THEY CAN INHIBIT, AID, OR PROVOKE OUR CREATIVE RESOURCES - THE CHOICE IS OURS.
With that, I return full circle here: Is Digital Fashion too advanced to be adopted mainstream?
Again, I believe not.
Education is the magic word here.
Institutes such as the The Fashion Innovation Agency at London College of Fashion, and IoDF, and initiatives by DressX and ESMOD, and SYKY are solely dedicated to mentoring Fashion Tech enthusiasts. If this subject was created to be included in mainstream design curriculums, we would see higher fashion tech literacy, and thereby, its adaptability.
It is natural to assume the Digital Fashion world to be exclusive, its mechanisms too avant-garde to be absorbed into the traditional industry’s systems. Sure, we are talking about forward-thinking protocols and cutting-edge innovations, but fashion has since long needed a jump-start.
We are not early. It takes time to adopt change. Even when change is certain.
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