Clothes that you’ll never touch
“Today we enter into a phase where technology and fashion need to be in sync. It’s no longer wishful thinking.” Cedric Charbit, CEO of Balenciaga in Vogue Global Conversations
Coronavirus has boosted the merge of tech and fashion, like in many other industries. Indeed, processes that were manual and that required physical presence are now done remotely. For instance, the wholesale process being digitized with digital collections and showrooms thanks to platforms like Joor, Ordre or Skmmp; or the shopping experience becoming personal with livestream commerce thanks to platforms like Hero.
However, there’s innovation beyond that — and that is virtual fashion. And yes, the first time you hear about it, it sounds unreal. But aren’t we, today, living in a science fiction movie?
Virtual fashion is clothing rendered in computer design programs either for prototyping purposes or to be ‘worn’ virtually by avatars, or via augmented reality, for example. Clothes that you’ll never touch, and that only exist virtually. In the past year, it has been gradually gaining people’s attention. Some months ago, I attended a lunch with Jen Sey (CMO of Levi Strauss) in Stanford with some other students — one of them introduced herself as “virtual fashion designer”. I have been following the trend since then, and I’m still impressed by it.
It has not yet arrived to the mass population and it is still far away from being normalized. But in the wake of the coronavirus, we’ve all been forced to turn to the virtual world. It is no surprise then that platforms that let people engage with clothes digitally are on the rise. Let’s see some examples.
Virtual fashion can be displayed in different formats and serve different purposes:
- Fashion try-on apps like Ada or Forma, that lets users try on fashion virtually by uploading a front-facing image of themselves or selecting a model (below my own example). The app looks like a marketplace with tens of thousands of outfits from names such as Marc Jacobs and Farfetch. In the past month, the app has seen its users double each week and an increase in inbound requests from brands to incorporate the service in their own e-commerce websites. What’s more, when I asked Achim Berg about the stigma toward used clothes after coronavirus he mentioned how his McKinsey colleagues in China had mentioned that trying on clothes in stores was becoming less popular. A world in which all e-commerce platforms offer the try-on service doesn’t seem crazy to me…
- Fashion houses that produce exclusively digital collections like The Fabricant or Carlings. These companies use blockchain technology to ensure ownership, and their numbers are surprising. The Fabricant sold a virtual dress for $9,500 while Carlings made 120 million euros in revenue in 2018, by selling its 3D collections and items from 10 to 30 euros a piece. On the side, they have partnerships with brands such as Tommy Hilfiger to digitize their collections. Now driven by social media-obsessed millennials, the digital clothing industry is expected to grow and even capture 1% of the fashion market share ($25Bn).
- Fashion gaming apps like Covet or Drest, that lets users style digital models with real clothes from brands such as Jimmy Choo. The app has seen a 50% month-over-month increase in users (in Italy it saw a 400% uplift during the first week in April, compared to the week before.)
- Model fitting with computer generated models like Shudu Gram and Imma (@shudugram and @imma.gram, 200k and 175k followers on Instagram respectively)
- Marketing campaigns like “Fashion in formation” by Selfridges, launched in partnership with Digi-gal, showing the digital collection of designer Cat Taylor
In addition to filling the appetite of fashionistas from home with their social media, it can also be seen as a solution for fashion’s main problem: the waste and the mass production. In an age of overconsumption, it is a way to consume fashion without contributing to the outrageous number of pieces produced annually (~114 billion). This argument is driving many designers, like Abasi Rosborough to integrate virtual fashion within the design process by launching first digitally and measuring the client reaction before producing the physical pieces.
What’s more, the coronavirus is said to impact people on the way they will think about how much clothing they actually need, versus how many clothes they need just to merely appear cool in a photograph. In the case of the latter, a virtual wardrobe makes much more sense in economic terms and for the environment.
This unprecedented time provides a fertile atmosphere for designers, brands and retailers to test concepts. And what about after confinement? If we’re moving to a more digital society in which we work more often from home, for instance, clothing might be made with digital occasions in mind. Could there be a space for both functional real-life clothing, and looks that are specifically designed for consumption through social media and webcam meetups?
For more detail on this, read “How Fashion post-pandemic future could be digital” on i-d.
Please feel free to share, comment, ask for sources or more articles on the topic and give me feedback!
