Digital Fashion and Virtual Clothing Design.

The 21 st century is more evolving into one where the physical and the digital space are continuously being blurred. This change has revolutionized the world of art all the way to business and fashion does not fall behind. Digital fashion is one of the most radical changes in the industry that can be described as all designs, rendering, and even wearing them fully in the virtual world. This movement comprises nothing less than digitally made clothes in 3D design program, online video gaming, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), social media filters, and metaverse. Whereas fashion is a process that changes with technology, digital fashion itself is a re-definition of the conceptualization, creation, consumption, and experience of clothes.   

The history of digital fashion comes down to a series of movements in computer-aided design, game-based entertainment, and online socialization. The use of something like digital avatars, building outfits with a game such as The Sims, Second Life and World of Warcraft so that the wearer had a choice, was used as early as the early 2000s. They were primitive in comparison to the 3D fashion renders of the present day but these initial experiments eventually preconditioned a world where clothes did not have to exist as an actual product to be valuable. An early example of such digital fashion markets is Second Life, which enabled the purchase and sale of virtual clothing. These ecosystems did not only prove the creative power of virtual clothes, but their social and economic usefulness, as well.

It was made possible by advances in 3D rendering technologies that opened the possibilities to impressive heights. Fashion designers started to use such tools as CLO 3D and Marvelous Designer which are initially used in gaming and animation to simulate prototyping of garments in a photo-realistic way. The 3D clothes in comparison to flat drawing, or even real-life sample could act as fabric drape, fabric stretch, and fabric motion simulation which provided an actual dynamic visual reference well before any fabric was ever cut. The designers would be able to play in a virtual sandbox using virtually endless possibilities of style, color, and fabric, minimize waste and optimize processes. As of 2010s, 3D fashion design was not just a means of making operations more efficient, but also of improving creativity. There also grew a whole new generation of designers who felt digital was their medium. 

The incorporation of digital fashion into social media and AR filters turned out to be one of the most significant novelties. Fashion consumption moved to the visual realm as Instagram, Snapchat and Tik Tok all became popular because rather than buying an article of clothing the new form of fashion consumption became depicting. The humans started appreciating the clothing not only by touching but by seeing it on the Internet. Brands and developers began to release digital outfits that people could wear in photographs or videos via augmented reality. One example was the Dutch digital fashion house The Fabricant, which in 2019 made world headlines when it sold a digital garment known as Iridescence, at a price of 9,500 US dollars. It was possible to wear the dress in photographs as it was possible to digitally place the dress on an image of a person. This was a paradigm change: clothes no longer needed to be actually present to be able to have value in the market, influence style and culture.

It is a development that is very close to the rest of the world that is benefiting the virtual wearing of clothes. The issue of avatars and online personas has become a widespread aspect of everyday life particularly among video games and online programs such as VRChat, Roblox, Decentraland, and Zepeto. Such platforms enable users to create themselves through their own personalized characters that have alternate outfits or costumes that can be purchased, designed, or otherwise altered typically with actual currencies or cryptocurrencies. In this respect, we make clothing a social currency. It conveys not only taste but belonging too well--just as it does in the real world, through fashion. The need to have special digital clothing has generated a whole business segment, in which designers make what are called skins to outfit avatars which sell in the real world.                                                                                                                           




That 2020 pandemic elicited even more rapid interest in digital fashion. With the in-person event, fashion shows, and retail shopping canceled or altered, designers and brands leaned towards the virtual alternative. Fashion shows were also conducted online with one even in a 3D world. The digital clothes were presented in video games, or as download files of avatars. Trapped at home yet still having the desire to express themselves, consumers started spending on their digital avatars. These borders between fashion, games, and tech started breaking down and created a new hybrid of technologically-liberating effect, taking place in the imaginary space in which creativity flourished without physical constraint of manufacture.

Digital fashion is also linked to the wider discussions of sustainability and minimization of waste. People were known to be resource-intensive in terms of water usage, and chemical dyeing in conventional fashion production and overproduction. On the contrary, there is no physical waste by-products in digital garments. It acts as a product already set in stone, in a way, independently of the fashion house digitizing its collections as well as independent designers who can experiment more freely in a digital-friendly environment, without incurring any of the costs on the environment. It is possible to design hundreds of versions of one clothing before it goes to the actual prototype and even then it may stay as a prototype. Such transition paves the way to a more sustainable design attitude, in which waste reduction is achieved via digital modeling and just-in-time manufacturing. 

To a certain extent, like in most opportunities, the entry into the design world is also democratized by the introduction of digital fashion. The impact of the tools, such as CLO 3D, Blender and the possibility of sharing via the platforms (instagram, tik-tok, marketplaces such as DressX) makes it feasible to create and sell independently produced items to customers worldwide. Today, the traditional fashion houses and runways are no longer relevant when it comes to the work of designers getting publicity. They are able to come up with digital-only works and directly sell to consumers. Such empowerment is particularly significant to the marginalized groups who never had access to the fashion industry in the past because of financial, geographical, or systemic factors. The main resources that are of utmost importance in the digital fashion world are being creative, technically skilled and having access to an internet connection.

When digital fashion became credible, big fashion brands started trying it out. One of the apparel companies, Gucci, launched a digital sneaker, designed as the Gucci Virtual 25, which can be worn by means of augmented reality in photographs and avatars within games. Balenciaga launched online performance fashion show and placed it into a video game-like setting. Among the examples are Burberry, Prada and Louis Vuitton who released their skins and sets of virtual fashion in games such as League of Legends, Animal Crossing, and Fortnite. Such partnerships are signs of an increasing understanding that digital fashion is not a fad but a real cultural and business driver. Fashion is a strong frontier in the gaming world, where the gamer will actually spend more to game their avatars than themselves.   

The ownership concept in the digital fashion also changed with the addition of blockchain and NFTs (non-fungible tokens). With NFTs, it is possible to give digital clothing items a verifiable ownership. This is the solution to the main issue in digital fashion, which is, how to convert the garments into something that can be owned and not shared in origin. There are such platforms as The Dematerialised, Digitalax, and RTFKT Studios allowing individuals to purchase, sell, and trade digital clothes as NFTs. Those are purchases that are frequently cryptocurrency based and may even have smart contracts that pay designers royalties whenever a work is sold again. This paradigm shift in the economy turns the fashion ecosystem upside down, making it more digital art and technology than retail-oriented.

It is worth mentioning though that not everything that is digital fashion deals with being a new thing or being lost in the world of fantasy through the virtual wardrobe. It also sets forth the discovery of identity, inclusivity and creativity in new paths. In the world of virtual reality, biology does not enslave bodies. In some instances, people have more scope to play with gender, size, ability and form beyond what physical fashion may allow. With digital fashion, people can easily express themselves creatively and fluidly across boundaries defined by tradition. The wearer of the garments can have clothing that glows and morphs into other shapes and colors depending on mood, or the time of day, something that cannot be done in real life. This creates limitless new grounds of self-expression and of design creativity. 

To sum up, the origins of digital fashion and virtual clothes design can be said to have deep roots in a long history of technological, cultural, and aesthetic discontinuity. Digital fashion has come a long way, beginning with simple avatar customization in video games up to state of the art realistic 3D design software, it has become a fully established industry with a variety of different applications. It is not just any shift in technology but in culture as well: the redefinition of ownership, sustainability, identity and creativity. With the ever growing digitisation of the world, the wardrobe will become digitalised as well. And out of this change they can be promised a fashion future that will be more imaginative, inclusive and sustainable than ever.