The future of fashion is virtual

Since the arrival of major platforms like Uber and Airbnb, we have started discussing the sharing economy and how access is more important than ownership. Names like Rachel Botsman have become a reference for the idea that it makes no sense to acquire a product if it won't be used very often—hence the emergence of different subscription, exchange, and sharing services for objects and services like Tem Açúcar? or even Netflix, which disrupted video rental stores.

Regarding fashion, the rise of thrift stores and second-hand shops has not only brought major brands closer to consumers who previously wouldn't have had access to these pieces due to their high prices, but also the idea of consuming fashion more sustainably. Being this one of the most polluting industries in the world and one that also represents a major influence on the use of slave labor (sweatshops), people began to question both the relevance of large department stores and the need to actually buy so many clothes and refresh their wardrobe every season—after all, that is the logic of the market.

At the same time, media celebrities also underwent a change as relevance and attention shifted from television and print media to social networks where anyone could become a digital influencer. Over time, however, we went through incidents that made us question the real influence and relevance of these people who, on different platforms, only reinforced the same ideas once seen in tabloids: excessive consumption, ostentation, and the portrayal of a happy, fake life.

As a counterpoint, computer graphics have given life to new virtual influencers: fictional characters who behave according to the platform's conduct, but who do not exist physically. Even so, they sign million-dollar contracts and promote brands that have their products digitized. In this sense, the fashion industry has adapted to these new times of social media exposure and fictional characters who move among "real" people by creating a new type of product: clothes that only exist in images.

More than a survival necessity (protection from the cold, for example), clothing has long served as an aesthetic accessory that represents an identity and extends the expression of the Self. We carry written and non-verbal messages in the clothes we wear and the choices we make—even when we put on the first thing we find in the closet, without judgment. But what is more important: being well-dressed at all times, even in trivial everyday situations, or having a well-crafted photo with lots of likes on your Instagram?

Given this, brands like the Scandinavian Carlings have been offering the purchase of digital clothing for between 10 and 30 euros, which are inserted into the customer's photo through photo editing done by the brand. That is, the chrome jackets and pants that appear in the store's catalog are not real pieces that will arrive at your house by mail: they are data that will be implemented into the photos that people send and then publish on their social media. As a differentiator, the brand produced 19 gender-neutral and size-free pieces, which have a limit of 12 units, to make them even more exclusive. To promote the collection, the company hired different Instagram influencers and sold out all products in just one week.

In an article recently published in Vogue, Maghan MacDowell ponders consumers' openness to buying something that only exists digitally. In reality, what the journalist comments is that gamers have been doing this for a long time, buying not only skins and other accessories for their characters, but also other resources that help them pass levels, for example. Furthermore, fashion games like Covet Fashion and Kim Kardashian: Hollywood already brought in, just last year, nearly $300 million combined. "People think this isn't real, but the numbers are taking off," said Matthew Drinkwater, head of the Fashion Innovation Agency at the London College of Fashion. "Fashion is still catching on to this wave. What would a digital piece from Louis Vuitton or Off-White look like?"

For Drinkwater, it will still take between 5 and 10 years for digital clothing to truly become common among consumers. Both he and Kerry Murphy, founder of the digital design house The Fabricant, cite the CryptoKitty case, a cryptocurrency project that sold virtual kittens and generated transactions of up to $140,000. But beyond consumer adoption, there is another barrier, as pointed out by MacDowell: fashion brands are not traditionally trained in 3D modeling, and fabric swatches are not easily converted into 3D. “A brand would have to hire a 3D artist to manually create the digital clothing—there is no code for ‘wool’ or ‘silk,’ for example. There are a few startups that already offer this service, but most 3D fashion visualizations, like those in mobile games, are still relatively crude,” says Murphy.

As Murphy also reports, The Fabricant is frequently contacted to create digital clothing projects, but the costs of a 3D designer are too high for the time required for such projects. As an example, a project with a Hong Kong luxury brand called I.T. took a team of five people three weeks to complete the visualization of 15 pieces. But despite these technical hurdles, Carlings is already planning a second collection of digital clothing to be released. In any case, here in Brazil, we already have the case of designer Cairê Moreira (Genyz) who has been working not only on making custom clothing through 3D scanning, but also on a new line of digital products represented by his virtual influencer Mia.

It may still be a very emerging and slow-moving market, but if we take into account the logic of Moore's Law or even Kurzweil's Curve, we know that, at some point, this market will take off and it will do so exponentially. On the other hand, it is also worth remembering the Gartner Hype Cycle regarding the popularity and power of technologies. Because it is still something very emerging and consolidates different current behavioral trends, it is likely that the digital clothing industry is still climbing the slope of its popularity curve, to finally gain more maturity perhaps within the timeframe suggested by the Vogue interviewees—between 5 to 10 years.

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