A brand new sector of digital-only clothing is rising in the fashion industry. Virtual fashion, in contrast to physical fashion, is designed and marketed for avatars and virtual platforms. Brands are entering the digital world with virtual samples or entire collections, and some brands are completely digital.
The Fabricant
The Dutch digital design house, The Fabricant’s founder Kerry Murphy originally came from working with visual effects in the film industry but wanted to pursue that same path in fashion. The all-virtual clothing brand was founded in 2018 but it really took off in 2019 when they sold their Iridescent Digi-couture Dress for $9,500. The Fabricant has collaborated with some of fashion’s most well-known names like Tommy Hilfiger and Soorty.
The brand is dropping pieces that are free for users to download and use, they’ve also launched the virtual platform Leela where anyone can play around with digital dresses.
— Digitalization is a critical move to ensure industry resilience, The designers in an interview with Mission.
Carling
In 2018 the Norwegian brand Carling launched their all-digital clothing collection called Neo-EX, a collaboration between Carling and the digital influencer Perl. The collection contained 19 pieces in bright colour and clear inspiration from the digital world in prints and graphics. Everything sold out quickly and the pieces were a hit on social media. All revenue from the collection was donated to WaterAid to create awareness of the huge amount of water that’s used in the production of physical clothing.
Tribute Brand
This all-digital fashion brand is based in Croatia and founded by Gala Marija Vrbanic and Filip Vajda. The brand exclusively creates virtual items and the designers have taken inspiration from video games when creating the pieces. The two designers had a mutual passion for sustainable design and together they founded Tribute. Since everything is virtually made there are no wasted materials. And that’s not the only upside to digital clothing, sizes always fit as well. Tribute brand only sells a limited amount of their pieces so once they are sold out they won’t come back.
Hanifa
Hanifa is a Congolese fashion label founded by Anifa Mvuemba. The brand is most known for its Pink Label Collection which showed 3D models of the clothes floating down the runway. Dresses were perfectly draped and shown over a black background and everything was digitally created. Even though the collection was not strictly virtual, the all virtual runway brought a lot of attention to the concept of digital clothing.
Dress-X
Dress-X is not itself a virtual clothing brand, but it plays a big part in digital fashion. They’re an international digital fashion brand retailer that carries fashion collections from the most well-known virtual brands and 3D designers. Dress-X helps customers who purchase virtual clothing to use them since a lot of people who buy these items have limited tools and knowledge of the digital world. The retailer carries a range of brands and soon they will be launching their app to make shopping even more convenient.
H&M
H&M recently announced that Internet entrepreneur and Game of Thrones child star Maisie Williams will become their global sustainability ambassador. Willams is going to co-operate with the fashion giant to try and highlight and encourage recycling, reusing and remaking in fashion. In conjunction with this announcement, H&M and Williams have teamed up with Animal Crossing, Nintendo’s simulation game, and created the Looop island in the game. ”H&M Looop island” will appear on the game and players will be able to recycle their game outfits and receive new ones in return. A version of Williams and Pascal Brun, global sustainability manager at H&M will appear in the game.
H&M also created a Maisie Avatar as a part of their newfound partnership, customers can follow ”avatarmaisie” who will appear on multiple VR events throughout the year.
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