DIGITAL FASHION MANIFEST: HOW AR AND VR CHANGE THE FASHION INDUSTRY IN 2020
New Reality
Author
CEO and co-founder of Instagram filter production studio FFFACE.ME
Photo credit The Fabricant
Just imagine that the only item in your closet is a black jumpsuit. At the same time, your looks on social media are combined from a huge number of wearables and accessories that you can wear at any moment. And you don’t even need to get them dry cleaned. Sounds like a tall tail? Or, perhaps, like a future where we have one foot? Just for Harper’s Bazaar, Dmitry Kornilov, CEO and co-founder of Instagram filter production studio FFFACE, helps us figure out how AR and VR affect the fashion industry these days.
Digital fashion made a big splash for the first time in 2019, when a band of designers of The Fabricant sold a digital dress (i.e. its 3D model) for $ 9,500. Since then, a member of the Cat Taylor band (also known as Cattytay) started to introduce the concept of combining tech and fashion to the largest fashion houses and brands, including Alexander Wang, Selfridges and Balenciaga. The essence of this event is absurd and revolutionary at the same time. Yes, a person has purchased a 3D model of clothing, so that she can generate her pictures in it, but never be able to wear it in real life.
During the COVID pandemic with forced social distancing, online/digital/virtual incarnation of fashion has become not just a beautiful concept, but a necessity. Consequently, all the options in the digital fashion segment in 2019–2020 (digital fitting, semi-digital clothing, digital jewelry and virtual fashion shows) were a success.
Virtual Fitting
Virtual fitting is a concept ideal for representatives of the beauty industry. As a result, almost every top make-up brand has released their own Instagram/SnapChat-filters and separate apps for trying on and buying makeup. The Belarus-based startup Wanna Kicks created a catalog for virtual shoe fitting, which included the best pairs of shoes produced by Nike, Puma and other brands, as well as collections by retail leaders like GOAT.
In addition, the AR-fitting technology has been successfully applied by almost every top eyewear company (among the Ukrainian brands, this is Casta produced by Luxoptica) and jewelry. For example, this is what the fitting of Bevza earings looks like:
So far, virtual fitting is only available for certain items of clothing. Tech giants like Apple, Facebook, Snapchat, Google and Amazon have only moved towards face and hand recognition, while independent developers like Wanna Kicks have developed foot tracking. The next goal is full-body tracking that will finally make it possible to try on dresses, suits and other wardrobe essentials. Rumours say that this milestone will be passed next year, as the first tests of this functionality have already been seen in Snapchat.
Digital Looks
People started realizing that their appearance on social media is getting far more crucial than the one in real life. This gave rise to the trend for products helping to generate unique digital outfits, so that users can take pictures of their real bodies with clothing items on it. At the beginning of this article, we have already mentioned the sensational case of The Fabricant. In this section, you can pay your attention to the Ukrainian platform Dress-X. Designers use it to sell digital versions of their clothing in 3D. If you purchase them, you’ll get your pictures and videos with garments integrated into them.
A skeptic might ask: Am I right to think that people buy their photoshopped pictures at the price of real clothes? Yes, that’s right. However, this trend looks strange only from a practical perspective of clothing consumption. In terms of fashion, it has proven functional, since you get the necessary attention of the audience, and your closet is not cluttered with another dress you’ll only wear once. Does it make sense? Totally!
Semi-Digital Clothing
There were several approaches to this concept, and each of them differed in positioning. First, the hype brand Vetements produced a hoodie that can be activated through an app, which ‘brings to life’ a cartoon on its print:
The concept did not become popular, since it required installing the app, and Vetements came up with it rather for fun. Then Carlings produced a basic T-shirt, which could be embellished with various digital prints by using Instagram filters. The brand approached the issue more thoroughly and managed to establish itself as the first AR clothing manufacturer. Thus, if a person takes an Instagram picture, he or she could get up to 20 different prints for the basic white T-shirt.
Almost simultaneously with Carlings, an AR clothing collection was released in Ukraine. The FINCH brand and Instagram filter production studio FFFACE designed a capsule collection with AR for hypebeasts. It differed from the previous collections by its release in 3D. This means that in addition to several digital modes of each garment, all of them ‘bring these items to life’ beyond the surface of a print, literally ‘separating’ from a person’s body. Along with a set of clothes, there were presented complementary selfie filters to embellish an outfit.
It’s noteworthy that the idea developed, and the Pepsi brand presented its limited edition merch as part of the same collaboration. Thus, it became the first FMCG company in Ukraine to be presented at Ukrainian Fashion Week.
In the end, it should be mentioned that the potential of this area (as well as completely digital looks) is fueled by the trend for responsible consumption. As a result, we get more content with new looks, and less real clothes, as well as environmental harm. An important point is that by using Instagram clothing for content creation, consumers automatically promote an Instagram account of a brand, which designed a filter. This means, when enjoying the advantages of semi-digital clothing, you automatically advertise it to your entire audience.
Virtual Fashion Shows
The first boom of this use case occurred back in 2017. At the time, along with a real show, there were a Lumier Garson VR show at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in Russia and a VR show at New York Fashion Week.
Over the next years, there have become more and more approaches to this technology. This is due to the tech giants’ lobby. At the same time, Samsung released its VR headset, which they tried to use in as many different situations as possible. Notably, this trend did not sidestep Ukraine. In 2018, the Serebrova brand held a VR-show at Ukrainian Fashion Week. It is worth noting that all of these cases were rather a PR stunt than really useful projects.
This is due to two factors:
1) there was no real need for a VR show. Those who really wanted to attend could do it, while the rest could watch a Youtube live stream;
2) the number of devices for a real VR experience (i. e. VR headsets) was so small that, as a rule, just super-geeks or demo stand visitors were able to fully get the sense of this technology.
Things changed in 2020 when quarantine made VR fashion shows a must. This year they were held by Prada, Malan Breton, Helsinki Fashion Week and many other platforms/brands:
Among the Ukrainian brands, Finch was the one that started using this option even before the quarantine, and together with FFFACE presented a collection completely virtually.
Despite the fact that virtual shows cannot completely replace offline ones, we can say that they are becoming an additional tool for fashion communication, and contribute to the development of the trend for digital looks. The main reason for this situation is that people lack this kind of experience, as well as the experience of buying clothes only for digital looks.
Nevertheless, the tool is developing and is changing from flat and unrealistic to understandable and impressive. Most likely, as with augmented reality, developing a mass device for this kind of experience (for example, new Apple glasses) will become an impetus for this use case.
Fashion Shooting with Augmented Reality
Perfect looks with perfect models are already in the past. They have stopped to perform their primary function of impressing consumers. On the other hand, the trend for content with imperfect beauty continues to grow, and it stands out in the feed, as it is offbeat.
Augmented reality filters and computer graphics have become the main tools for producing this kind of content. In the fashion segment, this option is already actively used by brands like Nike, Gucci, Versace.
Each of them released a set of Instagram filters that can be used both by users to generate their content, as well as by those brands to produce their own content fast.
In Conclusion
All of the above-mentioned fields were too raw just 2 years ago and could not go beyond concept projects. Now they are use cases, which look quite complete and are being ‘polished’ by the audience.
Yes, digital looks make sense in practical terms. And no, they cannot yet fully replace the usual fast fashion. In turn, virtual shows have finally become proper in terms of visual presentation, but still remain unusual even despite the fact that there are no offline alternatives.
I predict that all of the areas will be strengthening their positions until we all wear the same holographic jumpsuits, which are comfortable and practical; and until we differ by wearing custom digital clothes and avatars, just like in the movie Scanner Darkly
