What is digital fashion? - Instagram is a virtual runway where clothing is content

Last week, Quantstamp's CEO, Richard Ma, gifted his wife a 9500$ dress that doesn't exist physically. It is a digital haute couture dress, created by the Dutch company The Fabricant. This company specializes in the creation of digital fashion, that is, hyperrealistic clothes that exist in augmented reality but not physically. Once the dress has been designed, instead of the tailors, programmers and animators create it, as if it were a special effect, an ad personam Instagram filter. Richard Ma commented:

“It's definitely very expensive, but it's also like an investment... In 10 years time everybody will be 'wearing' digital fashion. It's a unique memento. It's a sign of the times”.

The price of the creative process for a digital collection is huge. Digital clothes do not have to respect the laws of physics and the only limits are only the imagination of the creator and their technical skills. As Vogue reports, The Fabricant only accepts projects that guarantee a minimum return of 25,000$ and last at least six weeks. All pieces must be drawn manually and then animated in 3D, a type of work too elaborate for brands to decide to incorporate it now into their current production. What can be said is that many trends tend towards the goal of augmented reality and its different applications.

Digital fashion represents the connection between virtual reality and tailoring. But is it really different from a glorified version of an Instagram filter? For all its technical elaboration, which is juxtaposable with that of actual art, digital fashion is still limited to the sphere of social media and e-commerce. Swedish company Carlings has released the "limited" collection Neo-Ex of nineteen digital garments, which sold out in a week. Carlings director Ronny Mikalsen commented:

“It sounds kinda stupid to say we 'sold out', which is theoretically impossible when you work with a digital collection because you can create as many as you want. We had set a limit on the amount of products we were going to produce to make it a bit more special. Being digital-only allows designers to create items that can push boundaries of extravagance or possibilities”.

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MINDS. BLOWN. . $9.500 for the first ever digital couture to be auctioned on the blockchain. We actually sold one of our items that has never been physical. Someone owns it now, and will be able to wear it if they choose to. . Created by us, worn by @johwska, auctioned by @Dapper_Labs at #EtherealNY @bleumode . Thank you everyone for your support and believing in what we do. This is a dream coming true.

Un post condiviso da The Fabricant (@the_fab_ric_ant) in data: 11 Mag 2019 alle ore 4:29 PDT

In a world where clothing is increasingly becoming an "art form for social media", as Daria Simonova called it, there is no real difference between the photo of a real dress and that of a virtual dress. Except perhaps that the virtual dress has been digitally adapted to the user's body with AR and has no imperfections or creases. At the end of the day, for the influencers who monetize their photos, it's superfluous that the dress in which they were photographed really exists: the important thing is that the photo exists. In the future, the digital dress could become as exclusive as the real one and users would pay to be portrayed wearing "limited" digital garments that, in the eyes of the average Instagram user, would be indistinguishable from physical ones.

However, this drive towards augmented reality has its contradictions. The experience of retail, of physical shopping in a physical store, with all its sensory and relational potential cannot become obsolete overnight. Buying an item is just the culmination of a process that begins with desire and continues with time spent in store. This process includes a number of elements that can only be real and tangible. They are the aesthetics of the boutique, the comfort of the dressing rooms, the quality of service received on the spot and so on. Things that an e-shop can't replicate. Luxury, precisely because of its inherent exclusivity, cannot be reduced to a bland click. If so, the only difference between buying luxury and fast fashion would be the cost. For brands it's still important to retain their customers in the old-fashioned way, that is, through sensory experience and human contact. Brands immune to the fluctuations of trends and the ephemeral fame of social media, such as Hermés and Goyard with their deliberate anti-marketing, have understood this for years. And that's why in the future, true luxury will continue to be offline.