How Fashion Is Being Digitized
Over the past few years, with the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, many parts of our daily lives shifted online. School and work were conducted on Zoom, we accessed grocery stores through our cell phones, and the only travel one could do was through Google Earth.
With this change, the fashion industry also adapted and moved online.
As the world shut down and everyone went into lockdown, countless fashion brands chose to hold online fashion showcases. Apart from following safety precautions, this made new “runways” much more accessible to the public. No one had to be invited to watch these shows, but rather, anyone could join to appreciate fashion.
With this came the term “digital fashion” which is basically fashion created through three-dimensional developing applications and then edited onto personal photos. The garments do not exist in real life and users don’t really own them. It may seem like a strange idea at first, but these digital clothes do have some benefits that may make them more appealing.
First of all, they’re rather sustainable. Since no clothing is actually produced, the material expended really only includes digital usage. This is especially important in today’s world where trends come and go like no other point in fashion history. Trend cycles have gotten as short as weeks and the production, as well as the eventual discardation, of clothes made to fit these trends has an extensive environmental impact. From the synthetic materials used to produce these clothes to the emissions produced in shipping them, the impact is undeniable.
This brings about the benefit of digital fashion as it is an emerging alternative to fast fashion, allowing customers to try the trends that they want to try without the ecological footprint that producing clothes leaves on the environment.
Another advantage to these digital garments is that they are easy to obtain in short periods of time. They come in a variety of styles that let customers explore their own fashion sense and the latest trends without them having to try anything on. The customer sends their pictures to the companies that produce these digital garments who then will do everything for the user.
This also means that this option is very size inclusive. As it is not “real” clothes that one is wearing, the outfits can be morphed and shaped into exact body shapes, allowing everyone to participate in the trends and outfits that they like.
Apart from the increase in digital clothes as a product of technological advancements, there was another advancement in the fashion industry that would make fashion and runways even more accessible than they already were with online shows: shows in the “metaverse.”
With the start of Covid-19 and the “digital era,” the popularity of the “metaverse” — a digital world where users can socialise, play or even work — was growing rapidly. Many events such as music festivals and celebrity fan meetings were being held online in the metaverse, instead of being held in person. The fashion industry also decided to latch onto this trend, and out of this desire to shift to the metaverse, the MVFW (Metaverse Fashion Week) was born. Many brands, some emerging ones and some household names such as Dolce & Gabbana and Tommy Hilfiger, decided to participate in the very first Metaverse Fashion Week. Held on the 24th of March 2022, the fashion week was a platform to both showcase new items but also digitise old pieces from previous runways and give them new lives in the metaverse. Both digital pieces and their real life counterparts were then sold in a digital marketplace called the Boston Portal with the use of NFT’s (Non-Fungible Tokens).
Despite the benefits of digitalization, this all brings up a concerning issue. NFT’s have repeatedly proven to be extremely harmful for the environment through the energy used to produce them. Although people have been trying to “cancel” or show the harmful side of NFT’s, the support that these fashion brands give to them through MVFW allows NFT’s to remain relevant in our lives.
Surprisingly, the more shocking idea of buying digital clothes is far more environmentally friendly than fashion shows in the metaverse. Although there are certain obstacles, such as NFT’s, that will always be hinder the move towards sustainability, the collaboration between fashion and technology is bound to allow for products that are substantial in both aesthetics and sustaining our environment.
Sources:
https://en.replicant.fashion/digitalfashion
https://metaversefashionweek.com
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/meaning-of-metaverse
https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/metaverse-fashion-week-watch-130757490.html
