7 Sustainable Fashion Brands You Should Know About
Gabrielle Mastronardo
September 15, 2023
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By now you’ve probably come across digital fashion in one way or another. The adaptation to digital fashion has caught fire over the past couple of years. In 2020 Balenciaga debuted their collection via their video game Afterworld: The Age of Tomorrow, and the first digital fashion week took place.
2021 saw Gucci enter the Metaverse with their Gucci Garden immersive experience, Moschino’s Sim’s collaboration, and Adidas’s wildly successful co-created NFT collection.
With the developments happening at blazing speeds, it’s hard to stay up to speed with this novel sector. I’m breaking down what digital fashion is, how it’s changing the fashion industry, and if it can be considered conscious fashion.
At present, virtual fashion “worn” by a person can take one of two forms:
Augmented Reality (AR)
Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI)
Virtual fashion for Augmented Reality works similarly to the social media filters that use AI to put cute dog ears on our selfies or give us the look of flawless makeup without lifting a tube of mascara. In AR fashion, the silhouette of the wearer’s body is tracked by the camera lens, allowing the garment to snap onto the wearer as well as move in real-time as the body does.
We are still at the very beginning of understanding all the ways this technology can be used for fashion. Currently, we are seeing it used for dressing influencers who can wear a digital garment for a “fit-pic” or promotional video, negating the need for a physical garment that will only be worn once.
Some brands have started experimenting with the power of AR reality to enhance their e-commerce user experiences. Both The Gap and Converse launched AR shopping apps that allow customers to try on virtually before buying. However, the development of AR fashion offers endless opportunities for development in the future.
James Joseph, founder of CYBR, the world’s first NFT magazine believes that it will become a part of our daily life in about half a decade. He said, “In four years we imagine that everyone will walk around with AR glasses on, and you will have the digital world imposed on reality for millions of people constantly. So, then you’re walking down the street in a black hoodie and some black jeans, but then you’ve bought a digital fashion garment, and every single person that walks past you wearing AR glasses is gonna see you wearing that garment, in real life, in real-time.”
On the other hand, we have Digital Fashion made with computer-generated images. This means that the garment is in the form of a 3D graphic that upon purchase is rendered onto a preexisting image.
We saw this first when British retailer Carlins released a digital clothing collection in 2018. People were able to buy garments from the collection, then by sending in a photo the garments were “digitally tailored” to the photo. This provides another interesting option for fashion influencers who feel the pressure to create content with new looks, without having to actually buy new physical clothing.
DRESS X is betting on the continued rise of CGI digital fashion for the future of the industry. The multi-brand e-commerce platform only sells digital garments. Co-founder and COO, Natalia Modenova is confident that digital fashion will carve its own space in the industry and help push it towards a more sustainable future, “This format will not completely replace physical clothing, but it will definitely exist in the industry, become an integral part, and take a certain market share. Digital fashion is an opportunity to redefine business models and build a more sustainable, progressive future.”
Both forms of digital fashion offer an enormous opportunity to clean up the industry beyond the internet culture-focused digitally dressed influencers and digital try-on can do. On the industry-facing side, digital fashion can transform the entire production process. Rather than creating samples out of physical materials and sending them around the world, companies could make their samples as CGI’s. Eliminating the wasteful and expensive sample process.
Taking it a step further using AR Technology fashion shows, and buying appointments could be completely digital. Allowing buyers to “try on” digital garments or see them on models, placing their orders before a single garment went into production. This would allow the industry to move away from the guesswork, and planned over-production and only make what is truly needed.
The PVH group has taken strides toward this opportunity. They launched Stitch-3D, a 3D design startup that focused on closing the gap between the opportunity and accessibility of CGIs for fashion. As of this year (2022), PVH’s Tommy Hilfiger will design and make samples only digitally, creating physical clothing strictly for runway shows or when actually sold.
At this point in time, it’s clear that everything we do or make has an environmental impact of some sort. Digital fashion is no exception. As we’ve seen so far, going virtual has many ways to help the fashion industry, like cutting out production waste, and overproduction not to mention the water usage and carbon footprint for each garment. According to DRESS X research, on average a digital garment saves 3300 liters of water per item, and emits 97% less CO2 Than its physical counterpart.
While this is quite impressive, we must also look at the negatives, both the concrete and the possible environmental threats in order to make sure that as this new sector develops we address these concerns from the get-go.
One of the biggest threats that digital fashion presents is the energy use required. Not only creating AR and CGI graphics requires energy, but also sending the files back and forth, as well as storage of the graphics. When we start to think about digital fashion replacing fast fashion, which currently produces in the billions, it’s easy to see that the amount of data needed to create and store these digital garments can quickly add up. This is something that needs to be considered.
Another threat that is emerging is the use of blockchain technology as a way to authenticate digital garments via NFTs. As digital and virtual fashion came into the forefront, we’re seeing brands increasingly interested in selling them as NFTs (nonfungible tokens). Using a crypto blockchain, most predominantly Ethereum, NFTs act as an authenticator for digital files, basically ensuring that the file belongs to the person who bought it. While blockchain technology is a great way to provide security for digital collections, it is extremely energy intensive. To put it in perspective, a single Ethereum transaction has a carbon footprint equivalent to watching 10,595 hours of YouTube — yikes.
When looking at the trade-offs it’s clear that digital fashion does offer the fashion industry opportunity to become more sustainable, especially within the production process. However, when it comes to the consumer side of the industry, there is still an elephant in the room: overconsumption.
While digital garments are less environmentally intrusive than their physical counterparts, they still pose the threat of being scaled to (if not past) the speed and volume that we see in fast fashion today. If we continue to see this done via NFTs it could be detrimental to the environment.
Users can wear something once for “fit-pics” without causing major harm to the planet
Gives e-commerce a new user experience dimension with virtual try-on opportunities
Digital sample production cuts down on wasted materials and transportation
Digital samples save time & money
Digital sample production curbs overproduction
Accessibility, as of now digital fashion is expensive
Accessibility, there is a knowledge gap between wanting to change, and enough people educated in 3D design and AR to scale
Data Carbon Footprint of Creation and Storage of Garments
Sold as NFTs often, which has a high carbon footprint
Non-Interactive/limited uses as of now
Doesn’t address the overconsumption issue at the core
With the world turning to a digital-first mindset, and the metaverse scaling rapidly we can expect that digital fashion will continue to make a space for itself within the fashion industry. As the education gap closes, we are sure to see more and more fashion brands turning to a digital-first supply chain in order to cut their production footprints.
On the consumer front, with internet culture continuing to dominate pop culture, people are only going to become more and more comfortable with the idea of virtual fashion. While for now it will be limited to the screen, maybe somewhere in the future we will be able to wear what’s hanging in our virtual closets in the real world.
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