Digital fashion is not here to stay, it is here to inspire, entertain and transform our culture towards a more balanced state and influence + support the shift of the physical layer of our complex industry towards Balanced Fashion. Below you will find the proof of the fact that the ecosystem and its key trailblazers are about to be ready for the greatest transformation the industry has experienced since the invention of Shirtwaist in 1890s.
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Here is a link to our Balanced Culture work, that we have collected so far.
NOW, to the PIECE.
FINALLY, it is time to publish this digital art piece that this guide is intended to be. I feel beyond happy you are tuning in! This megalithic piece of literature has been brewing for a while. In parallel, I also wrote a gigantic meta article on the FALL of Digital Fashion which I will publish later, (to counter balance my until today most popular by far digital fashion focused piece of writing from 2019) as I strongly believe that the real future of fashion is physical, no matter how like we enjoy creating digital solutions. Physical world and all that we create, besides what is made from biodegradable materials, is not gonna go anywhere, so we all will have to deal with an overwhelming amount of by-product the industry has produced over the past decades. However, this article is not about that elephant in the room. It is about the air in the room so to speak…
This piece of writing is set to educate the readers and my fellow visionaries on the digital fashion as a layer of reality that we will be exploring until we reach a deep sate of inner peace as human beings and won’t need this ‘old life’, expired thing we call technology to satisfy our emotional needs outside of ourselves. We are more powerful than the technology tools that we have developed so far, trust me on that. When you spiritually advance yourself and learn to apply your inner technology such as heart space and third eye, and the intelligence of our body in your daily life, you will experience what I mean. Magic is what we choose to create daily. More about that in the mentioned above Meta article to be published when I feel it is ready to be seen publicly.
For now, what we collectively agreed to call DIGITAL FASHION is a cool new concept for us to direct our attention towards and utilize the tools we have developed to visualize and manifest a dynamic, exciting and fun creative infrastructure that will have a capacity to welcome in, hold and support the finally circular, transparent, traceable, ethical, and responsible physical fashion and consumer goods industries. It will help us model the new ways of consumption, collection and care for this beautiful creative medium we call fashion that has been shaping our global culture throughout the history of Humanity.
Fashion is cool. Fashion has the capacity to envision better and brighter realities. We, digital fashion natives, have the capacity to create a completely new dream for the WHOLE WORLD to follow. That is what this article is for, to boost YOUR personal feeling of empowerment in this space, dear reader.
If you feel overwhelmed reading this piece, simply stop and come back to it when you feel authentically curious to continue. This article is intended to be a study material, rather than a one-time, disposable piece of content that so many of us are so tired of at this point.
This piece is written by me as a result of my life’s work. I have been in competitive sports (which crypto fashion basically is), luxury fashion sales and PR, multiple businesses owner, product manager of hottest fashion tech ventures, consultant, advisor and investor in the broadest sense of digital fashion world for my whole life. For many, many months now I have been diving into incredibly rich process of research and collected a large body of work for an in-depth report around what is Newlife.ai, LUKSO, Arianee, Vechain, Aura and other upcoming giants in the crypto for the future of luxury & creative economies are here to bring. This article is not intended to cover such giants, but to show what is currently being built in the space and how fashion brands can start strategizing their phygitalization movement because that is part of what we call Balanced Fashion movement, whether you like it or not. Because we are going to stop producing new physical fashion in such great quantities and start training our community to consume less by entertaining ourselves via digital means, helping the fashion audience to understand our collective movement into DAOs & Universal Creative Income via crypto space in a sexy and fun way. Think back to the e-commerce in early 2000s. Crypto (hopefully, equivalent to digital at some point) fashion is that now. OK? Sank that in?
Let’s move on. I hope if you have stumbled upon this article I do not have to define NFTs for you. Anyways, we do not have to use that term anymore and simply call all digitally-native products on-chain.
Fashion and traditional art spaces desperately needed the next level blockchain ecosystems & storytelling around them to be built to cater to specificities of these creative areas that are renowned to be so stale in terms of technology applications. These fields are so drastically different from DeFi in terms of language, while the traditional monetary systems’ infrastructures seem to be less complex than the beast of the world we have built in fashion ecosystems in the past decades. I was early in the game exploring and reporting my visions of how blockchain technology can be applied in the fashion world for good. Check out the two-part (1 & 2) series I wrote back in 2018, when there was still very little research completed in blockchain applications for the fashion industry. This pre-dates all projects mentioned in this article below. OK? Ok. I know the topic. I am a crypto investor from earlier than you may assume. I know what I am talking about even when you meet me you think I am a creative strategist. I am a deeply geeky technologist at heart. Looking at code makes me feel relaxed. Talking tech is my love language. I fall in love with humans who code because fashion and art is a form of coding language too. Just more aesthetically pleasing and more universally recognized. In fashion, we speak with visual codes and program the consciousness of everyone who is exposed to our fashion choices. Nowadays with the word fashion we mean the whole industry, but when I use the word fashion, I mean universal language, a system of codes.
Back to the topic of digital fashion. We are currently taking part in the next iteration of the industry emerging and developing ecosystems to support the upcoming transition from the old ways of how fashion industry operated, to the new. This is still very much work in progress across all the companies I am closely watching, that are part of the Balanced Fashion ecosystem of Web 3.0.
I am still educating myself and seeing how CLOSED and relatively tight this space is for anyone like me who is extremely enthusiastic in my research, while not being directly affiliated with any technology, doing all the research all by myself, without any formal advisors and guides and digging passionately for answers of what is to come, reporting on the deepest Truth behind the big, ambitious statements on those Web 3.0 projects’ initiatives. Deeper about that to be reported in the future.
Grounding back to something that is more digestible for us now right now. Practical applications and narratives of digital fashion and examples of b2c platforms that are currently being developed.
WELCOME to my grand overview of Fashion Focused NFT Marketplaces and other supporting projects that make up the fabric of the emerging Digital Fashion World.
Here is a summary of the featured above projects for our convenience.
Call it table of contents, but not really because this platform doesn’t allow this feature. You know tech, it expands and limits us at the same time.
NFT Marketplaces & Brands
https://thedematerialised.com/
Digital Fashion Marketplaces & Brands
https://www.replicant.fashion/
Ecosystem
https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/
https://www.marvelousdesigner.com/
https://www.gravitysketch.com/
https://www.thisoutfitdoesnotexist.com/
https://www.instagram.com/3dee_leonie/
http://institute-digital.fashion/
https://thedigitalfashiongroup.academy/
https://thedigitalfashiongroup.com/
https://globaltalents.digital/en/
http://helsinkifashionweeklive.com/
Now, first thing’s first…
Nataliya.ai via Newlife.ai
COMING UP.
My philosophy is that NATURAL is the way. Technology is only a tool for entertainment and data storage & management (including money management, that to me our creative expression in form of content represents). Every physical object that I own is a carefully invited into my life, deeply curated art piece, a costume for my physical avatar in our greater metaverse version we call real life. Each physical item that I choose to own is more precious than any digital product ever created, while every piece of digital content that I create and post anywhere online IS Digital Fashion. Every photo I take and every screenshot I make is a mintable on-demand NFT. Let that sink in.
Take your time.
The fact is that every node I post on Newlife.ai is already an on-demand mintable NFT piece, tradable on our marketplace in the future. More info to be disclosed in time.
As I have been working on the communications & merchandising integrated and interoperable strategy for Newlife.ai starting back in 2019 (without a monetary agreement, solely as my personal passion project), I have so far prepared multiple bundles of both physical and digital merch, ready to be dropped and distributed when the time is right. Some have already been dropped, but I do experience it as slow, balanced and careful unrolling process. Our project is still a toddler and being developed and the metastory of our new life is currently being written. If you have been following my work on Newlife.ai, you may better understand what’s up. If you ever tuned in to my lives on Instagram on Nataliya.ai and Balanced Fashion accounts back in 2020 when I went live almost daily you have some idea of the energy of what is being built. If you know me personally and close to me, you know how dedicated I am to this work. And if these concepts sparked your curiosity, take time to watch some of the explainers I recorded and posted on YouTube as a preview of what is to come.
For now, sharing with you parts of a raw presentation I created back in mid 2020 to showcase my visions to my team back then.
To express my personal emotions towards the whole digital fashion space I report on below, I took the initiative to be the first one ever to publicly borrow and present a featured on Dematerialized digital items and chose to playfully try them on using the most advanced image editing system I could access at that moment on my new MacBook Air: a legendary Keynote app. It took me around 2 minutes and 22 seconds to style myself, which included going on the ancient platform we call Facebook and selecting timeless, emotionally charged photos of me to model those historically significant garments.
Below you see the results. Please note that these are my first ever publicly shared and not removed digital garment modeling images since around 2014. (Yes I have been in the digital fashion space for that long, some day I will write a whole book on that… oh wait, we already have Newlife.ai for that story layer to be filled in!). These three works are visually representing my real opinion on the future of digital garments, which I believe is purely created for our entertainment. I do acknowledge that this article is not about me and my personal opinions only. It is about the projects featured below and all the teams of people who are working hard to create new ecosystems that are beyond fashion, art and technology, it is a space to shape culture of the future, an authentication of physical and digital assets, a redefinition of ownership, where we are invited to consume less in physical world, while sharing and having fun more while in digital worlds. Hopefully, the better ecosystems will still keep us more off-screens than inside of the metaverses. Or what we now call metaverses will be less about screens and more about physical interactions with augmented reality visualization and projection and holographic technologies advancements. (forget your glasses and lenses old life dreams pls, those are not that cool, trust me)
These three art works are already featured in my signature style of nodes preview layout and mintable on-demand on our native digital fortress platform, Newlife.ai. I might also print them out and place our light language codes on them, which will immediately mark those pieces as infinite value, backed by the next level of blockchain technology off traditional technology that we utilize now. More about that and Nataliya.ai phygital mega project in the articles I publish in the future, as this is still deeply in dev mode. What you see below and what I share on my social channels are only teasers to my work that is yet to be met by the worlds of fashion, tech, art and culture, unless you are on Newlife.ai, where with time spent on our platform, you would get a deeper preview on what Nataliya.ai is about.
Artisant.io
Clear and simple digital fashion NFT marketplace, super fresh out of Regina Turbina’s beautiful brain oven (launched on June 17 2021). I love her and currently building deep trust with her, as she is acclaimed by our space as a Veteran of Digital fashion marketplace game, starting with sharing her own digital designs, moved on to creating space for other brands to be represented at The Replicant marketplace, way earlier than Dress X or Dematerialized were birthed into the Metaverse. Now, I see Artisant has a HUGE future, so mark my words. Also, yes, I am personally aiming to be involved in supporting Regina’s vision and helping nurture the ecosystem and community of the creators that are curated to be part of this project from the early stage. Currently, the designs featured on the platform are over the top and fantastical, exactly the way I want to see digital space to be. Realistic designs feel old life to me when it comes to garments that are only available in digital format. I look forward to seeing capacity to purchase selected layers and elements of the garments to be able to use them as AR add-ons in my personal projects and initiatives in this incredibly rich in potential space. What I see featured on Artisant so far is not fashion, it is art, but not the kind of simplified crypto or gaming art, but rather a true sample of what a new, never seen before cultural movement towards what experiential visual arts could do in entertaining our digital presence and satisfying our self expression fantasies.
Would I invest in my first official digital garment on it? Actually, maybe. We will see.
Dematerialised
This project has a lot of energy behind it than the currently carried substance, solely because it is running on LUKSO-powered blockchain infrastructure for which I have been trained to set extremely high expectations to resolve many fashion and lifestyle industry problems connected digital assets management and certification of authenticity, phygitalization of ownership, universal public profiles, etc…
Before we go any further, here is full disclosure: I have a personal relationship with LUKSO team since 2019, featured them in the big pieces of writing that are connected to the fields of blockchain & digital fashion, hosted the co-founder Fabian at my NYC event in Spring 2019 focused on blockchain and digital fashion, co-hosted an event at their Berlin location, and generally have always supported LUSKO initiatives with informal and public industry communications, without being hired or paid for my communications work.
In late 2019 Marjorie asked me to develop a content strategy plan for LUKSO but we were not able to find balance in our interpersonal communications flow and all the outcomes from the hours of work I spent doing research and development of the comms and content strategy were not seen and reviewed by Marjorie and thus not paid by the company. So, yes, I am sad, angry and frustrated, even though 50% of this is my responsibility of not setting clear boundaries of my work. Won’t go into more detail because I trust we will find time with LUKSO team to resolve this in the near future. Just saying that this is a painfully common thing in the fashion space, not being paid without any explanation or feedback. Lack of communications…manifesting in ignoring this issue for months, although acknowledging the year 2020 in general has been the weirdest time for all of us collectively, not expecting full clarity of what has been going on for anyone until years after.
Thus it is still difficult for me not to be slightly negatively biased in reporting on Dematerialised, the platform that has the same co-founder as the LUKSO team. And I love you Marjorie, you are my fellow visionary! We will make our communications work, I promise. So I will try my best to stay neutral here. To be honest it took me months and months to sit down and focus on putting together this whole piece because I was hoping to resolve this heaviness with the LUKSO team before further featuring this powerful project run on LUKSO, Dematerialised, in my strategic Balanced Fashion public communications. But here I am, doing it. As transparently as it feels ethical, considering I am intentionally naturally emotional and raw in my public communications. The idea behind Dematerialised is great, execution is beautiful. Very game-metaverse-like, so fashion feels very far away when I think about this project. I personally simply not guided to support this work as unconditionally as I did before and not choosing to invest more energy in reporting on this platform that has a HUGE future if the strategic industry relationships are built more carefully and the history we are creating is clean, transparent and open. I invite you to study Dematerialised’ rich in info media kit for further details about this NFT marketplace and digital assets wardrobe management platform.
Here is a copy of the way they describe themselves on their website.
‘THE DEMATERIALISED are creating a new reality for fashion.
Our purpose is to converge and nurture the emerging digital fashion ecosystem providing viable new revenue streams and visceral experiences with a Web3 marketplace for authenticated virtual goods.
Ultimately, our experimental yet empathic approach towards digital fashion assets aims to challenge the traditional fashion business models of production, consumption and ownership with a more transparent, efficient and equitable approach.’
Brand New Vision
A less fashion-ey and more bro-game-y digital fashion marketplace-auction portal where you can bid for, collect, and trade virtual apparel, footwear and accessories from questionable brands. From what is currently present on the platform as of early June 2021 this is already a stale project but I may be wrong because they just got an investment poured in. Take a look at their Notion page with a quick explainer on what is this about and judge for yourself. No story, for now feels like a hype-led quickly executed MVP. I may be wrong, but so far it feels like an experiment without a big intentional work behind it. I do appreciate that some items also came in physical if you purchased an NFT, that is something to deeply explore for the digital fashion space in general. Excited to be in touch with them in the future — I have seen and consulted many many many projects like these in my career and know how to turn a project like this into a perfect work of art for the whole industry to admire and feel inspired by.
Digitalax
Honest and direct here. Nothing personal at all! Just everything about this project makes me cringe hard since its launch. The Marketplace is live and very curated. Communications is out balance and all over the place, visually super confusing as of now. Even the lovely founder Emma-Jane MacKinnon-Lee speaking on YouTube feels confused and tired while explaining the complex systems of the Digitalax infrastructure. With the name like hers, we can imagine, long, complex pieces of data are not a problem for her brain but they are for many of us! I personally do want to come visit her sometime and give her a big hug and say that everything is gonna be OK and she doesn’t have to play this game so hard because this game is an illusion and she is the one that sets pace and rythm. I do respect the deep effort placed to build this ecosystem that is clearly valuable for a gamers market and see a bright future for this entity once it is a little less energetically electric and more relaxed and simplified.
Digitalax Medium Blog can be a good insight for those who actually want to support this company by learning what is being developed. Digifizzy, the Metaverse magazine they publish. Feels extremely fizzy, too fizzy, can’t focus on reading a word published there.
Just FYI this is not fashion platform as per our Balanced Fashion standard, this is full on on-chain assets gaming start up. So we deny to seriously report on this company before there is an aesthetical and philosophical alignment with what we consider as cultural shaper in a broader sense of the world, outside of the intensely energetically & visually dense intersection of the worlds of gaming and crypto. Curious on what is to come from DigitalX in the future when the project matures? YES, definitely. Investing? Not for me.
RTFKT
Digital shoes brand. They call themselves Next Gen Sneakers and Collectibles for the metaverse. Made plenty of noise recently, still looks like a gaming plug in or something, not a brand. Honestly not interested in investigating more than I already did, even though they scored a collab with Fabricant for Dematerialized early drops and got together with Crypto Punks which is cute and sweet but not exciting to me personally, only makes me want to call it crypto art rather than digital fashion brand. We will see where life leads this one on, staying open and curious for their future since the start has been strong from the PoV of industry standards so far.
Digiwear.io
Built on PolkaDot blockchain, which makes me feel a bit excited and hopeful than looking at digital fashion NFTs Ethereum projects. The execution is still extra poor so far, energetically feels stale already, but maybe I am reporting on it too early. Will keep an eye on their Digiwear Medium, Twitter and Wikipage for deeper updates. Check out their deck too.
Used to be one of the OG digital fashion assets marketplaces before they got into the NFT art space loop and got lost in the crypto art trash movement. Oh well. RIP old Zora. Welcome another trash NFT marketplace. We had high hopes for you early days.
Replicant
I am biased, I am friends founder of Replicant Regina Turbina since we met in person back in August 2020, and I shared with her and her partner my signature phygital NFTs, which acts as a multidimensional contract (more about this in my later Medium posts) and was lucky to experience first hand that she is such a visionary sweetheart, there is no way I can be tough love with her with my review. Also, since she has just launched the NFT Marketplace Artisant, mentioned above, I believe that these projects will be integrated in the future and the whole empire that Regina is building is going to develop, improve and lead the whole space in years ahead. She is a powerful thought leader, authentic, curious and kind. Many of us are going to learn from her way of thinking and seeing the world. Since the launch on May 20, 2020, Replicant already collaborated with Puma, did an epic GQ cover with a Russian hottest comedian, initially consulted DressX (see below), collaborated with Clometrica body tracking & outfitting app. That is what I call being on top of the game and keeping up with experimentation, collaborations, community building and overal taking the leadership role of showcasing what is possible to build in the digital fashion space as the markerplace & community platform without burning herself out.
DressX
Originally I had huge expectations for this platform and what it can do for the world of digital fashion! So everything that I say further is coming from a fellow sisterly Eastern European vibes of tough love and deep care, so do not take that as negative feedback, dear Dasha and Natalia! Still not sure why this early in the digital game marketplace (launched after Replicant) is still not on chain, although I did notice a Digitalax & DressX piece here and Natalia’s video promo post from June 16–17, mentioning NFTs. I am sure it is coming, just really curous to know what chain this will be on and why not join forces with Dematerialized, because they would clearly benefit from your relationship building skills.
What I have been clearly noticing since their launch in 2020, that DressX needs help with narrative adjustment to create more intentional and forward thinking public facing communications, because currently it looks very consumer driven, what I call very ‘old life’ commerce. A currently used slogan ‘Don’t buy less. Shop digital fashion’ feels disgusting, quite honestly. I would never tell customers not to buy less, it feels the opposite of where the world is heading in general (read conscious consumerism, slow fashion, taking care of our mental health, etc). The website looks and feels the opposite of what I hope to see trending in digital fashion space before the whole thing cools off… So far, the work that has been invested in this marketplace is both impressive (due to number and quality of designer partnerships secured) and at the same time more pathetic than any other digital fashion project I have ever came across (ok maybe besides the gaming outfits platforms) due to the plain and boring visual execution and lack of coherent storytelling. I understand the fact that you, colleagues, are trying to cater that original fashion consumer crowd, yet seeing the classic e-commerce layout that by this point feels SO annoying + seeing SALE prices on digital garments make me want to stop writing this piece and quit the whole space immediately out of frustration. Putting items on sale is very embarrassing for such an hyped up spaces as digital fashion, my friends! Let us not continue the trends of messing up with prices at this point, we as an industry have already misled our audience for so many years with lack of transparency in pricing.
Do not get me wrong, I do admire DigitalX work so much. So many designers are featured! Wow. The team must have burnt out from building this in 2020, I feel empathetic. Please slow down and stop playing with the hearts of the customers who look up to you as trend setters. Be more mindful with the way you communicate your vision, perhaps feature less brands, do not try to be the Amazon of digital fashion or another e-commerce platform for items that do not even exist irl, this is not how we want to model the innovation in the space that desperately needs a fresh new narrative to educate consumers on how to become truly conscious collectors and investors in art, supporters of brands they authentically feel passionate about! Always open to talk with you and dive deeper into strategic communications work.
XR Couture
Average quality marketplace, not on chain. Poor website copy. Feels very 2018–2019. Feels like the founders are not even enjoying or caring about this venture. On a positive side, it is one of the first digital fashion marketplaces and features items that are truly new for the eyes of many. It feels that the hype of that particular aesthetic was lost somehow back in 2020, there is nothing new that has been introduced yet. Do not have anything else to say besides, good luck upgrading, team!
Drest
This is a marketplace of physical products and a ‘styling game’, where you can also try on clothing on an avatar of your choice. I have nothing else to add besides ‘why not’.
DIGITAL FIRST BRANDS
The Fabricant
This company is better than this piece of writing, but since this is a historical piece, I cannot exclude it from here. The very original digital-only fashion brand. A true cultural shaper. Beyond fashion. The team is doing an epic job in communications on what they are building & their powerful vision and being a perfect model for the whole space. I have personally met the founder, Kerry in Berlin during Fashion Tech Berlin conference and visited the team in Amsterdam back in 2019, so I confirmed with my own experience how dedicated, passionate and authentic they are in what they are set to create for the digital space and beyond. Beyond fashion. They shape a whole new category of digital creative assets that are in the intersection of art, augmented reality, entertainment, collectible assets and philosophy. They do not feel like a fashion brand to me, but a technology-powered visual innovations leader in the meta modern space we are yet to define. I love you, Fabricant.
Here are a couple of quotes that I like from their sustainability page:
‘The Fabricant is the world’s first digital fashion house, making innovative and compelling 3D garments and fashion narratives that are entirely non-physical. Among our founding principles is the belief that fashion should waste nothing but data and exploit nothing but the imagination. Through our work we harness the power of the digital realm to build an inspiring and collaborative fashion future that operates beyond physical boundaries. We are committed to the creation of a new fashion perspective that revolutionises industry systems, and makes self expression through digital clothing a sustainable way to explore personal identity.’
‘Through the use of creative technology, and the data it creates, digital fashion’s clear benefits can positively influence processes throughout the supply chain. Any fashion entity, no matter what part it plays, will benefit from the sustainability gains of transitioning to digital practices. It not only creates an industry that’s less wasteful and less environmentally impactful than ever before, it allows a fashion future that’s smarter, more resilient, and better placed to manage uncertainty. Join us in creating a digital-centric fashion world that’s suitable for the needs of the 21st century, and ready to evolve for what lies ahead.’
Here’s the link to their sustainability report created in collaboration with Imperial College London’s Centre for Environmental Policy. NOTE for the academics who are reading this article: this report might be the only deep dive piece of data you feel satisfied to take away from this whole post on digital fashion.
Fabricant x Buffalo London Collab #2
Available on Async now as of June 17 2021, epic customizable options are here. You can purchase separate layers too! Give me customization options and a 16 year old me as a designer is finally happy and satisfied with the product purchase experience. Still won’t invest, sorry friends…I wish to invest in a more ethical version of blockchain than Ether at this point.
Auroboros
Clearly the winner in terms of the high level of digital fashion craftsmanship to me, personally. (Considering The Fabricant is beyond the whole game at this point.) Perfect example of what contacless (hate that term, just tested it here) clothing could actually be outside of the regular-looking garments or those items that look like they have been stolen from the gaming world . To me, Auroboros is the Alexander McQueen of digital fashion world so far. The London Fashion Week crew most likely agrees as they selected this brand as the first digital one to participate in their official Fall 2021 season online shows. The price point is higher on average than what I saw in other digital fashion products that are not on chain.. why not, as this is an incredibly intricate, enticing, artistic work. I do want to see more of this degree of mastery in digital fashion space! Plus more movement and interactivity. Would I buy? Still ‘fuck no’ in my system… unless it becomes available on non-ethereum blockchain, maybe I will invest in it as a historical reference piece to see if the price does go up with time before the real fall of this space when humanity rebalances and fully wakes up to our inner technology.
Tribute Brand
One of the OG brands of the digital fashion space. Since their launch nothing much has changed or developed in terms of aesthetics and craftsmanship, their designs haven’t evolved a bit in my perspective, and I personally feel bored from this particular shiny surface look and highly surprised that Dematerialized is choosing to support this brand with among their first few NFT drops, but I guess this is part of the history in the making of the digital fashion space and a form of paying respect based on the relationships that have been built in 2020 with those who were first in the market in a splashy and what we already can consider as successful way. I do not want to call what they do fashion, this is to me more of a gaming outfits brand. Again, super tired of this aesthetics and craving for something new to come out from this brand soon. I do appreciate the way they dress up influencers in the fashion tech space as a way to promote their work.
STUDIO PMS
Utrecht-based powerhouse digital fashion collective. Super talented group of people who work with Nike, Adidas, Burberry and Zara among others to trailblaze the future of digital implementation for bigger brands.
Nusi Quero
That case where this is an actual 3D fashion designer, whose digital pieces are as appealing and mystical as the physical pieces. I have been a fan for a long time, Nusi! Amazing work.
DIGITAL FASHION ECOSYSTEM PLAYERS
Top 3D Design Tools
From what we have heard from the digital designers, most of them have learned 3D design via YouTube tutorials, so do your own research please!
CLO3D
Unreal Engine
Marvelous Designer
Gravity Sketch
Browzwear
VR Showcase Solutions
Focusing on the Unreal Engine based VR space creation for bands and retailers. Good job getting the interest of Farfetch and Burberry, and Pangaia VR game thing was cute, what else can we say.
Obsess VR
NY-based start up that has been in business for years now developing solutions for stores to virtually transform the traditional way products are presented in e-commerce platforms.
Voor3D
Virtual showrooming tool we don’t fully believe in, because we trust in the B2B space in physical as a default and virtual aspect would be an optional ad-on. Post 2020, we, the industry people are truly tired of digital only spaces to do b2b business in.
`FRIENDS & FAMILY´ of Digital Fashion Initiatives,
aka individuals and organizations that contribute to the curation & narration of the unfolding of the digital fashion paradigm.
Crypto Fashion Week
Insta YouTube playlist of the Inaugurate Feb 2021 edition
Exciting series of educational events around this space held by Universe Contemporary. Next one is in mapped out for Sept. 2021. Covered by NYLON. My favorite part was Newlife.ai presentation.
3DRobe
Advisors and 3D design studio for digital fashion. Alumni of NYFTL which is always a pretty good sign in the reliability of the founding team.
This Outfit Does not Exist
Honestly still not fully understanding what this initiative is here to do yet, just seeing a lot of posting effort created on instagram and some activity on clubhouse. We will see…
Armoar
Enara’s (Clubhouse Digital Fashion OG moderator) project, not sure what it is about but looks like it fits this ‘Friends and Family’ of digital fashion category.
3Dee Leonie
A powerful instagram content creator with a beautiful heart, currently working on the Dematerialized side of the digital fashion game. Good catch, Demat team! I personally interviewed Leonie back in May 2020, watch it here.
Digital Fashion Education & Consulting Initiatives
Institute of Digital Fashion
A project feels beautiful, not quite clear in their communications what is their real activity about, but I get it somehow. Consulting, advising, narrating, educating — that is what I intuitively pick up from it. Feel good vibes from the founding team. Scored a nice Dazed feature back in Feb 2021. Good luck in your further developments!
Academy by The Digital Fashion Group
Excited for my OG college in NYC, dear Parsons The New School for Design to launch this program. 6 units cost 2,500 Euros to attend. Amber of Fabricant is on the front page video describing the courses. Makes me as a 16 year old self ask parents for the money to get me join this privileged hype alignment opportunity, instead of doing my own research and submerging into YouTube tutorials and articles like this one for days and nights.
Billion Dollar Collection by H&M, PDF with cool start ups is here
This is a nice example of H&M going into an interesting direction…still exploring the application of digital, it feels to early to report on what is this about constructively.
‘The collection — characterized by asymmetrical details, trinket-like finishing, non-standard colors and bold volumes — has been exclusively created in computer-generated imagery by Mackevision, part of Accenture Interactive. Using the latest CGI character design technology, Mackevision created a unique digital avatar from scratch, which brings the textures and intricate details of the collection to life through movement.’
Somehow I do have a good feeling about what is to come from the big brand names perspective in their ways of applying digital fashion. Cannot quite explain what I am seeing, but feeling that this is gonna be a beautiful evolution of the fast fashion space towards deeper phygitalization, circularity and education. The money is there, the desire to shift is also present. Now what we are gonna do with all the excess stock… and would we actually be able to minimize the physical production of fast fashion which I still see as waste.
Global Talents Digital
A project by Russian Fashion Council sets a high bar on the locally developed global support system creation of the (digital and not only) powerfully talented fashion community that is undoubtedly going to grow deeper in the future.
Helsinki Fashion Week and whatever Evelyn Mora is building within the Digital Village
Press release for DV. Not feeling close to downloading the VeChain Sync2 wallet to test run the current version of what is being built but someday, maybe.
Evelyn is great. I feel real around her while on Clubhouse. She is about as sharp minded & tongued as I am, I respect her, although she did not bother to meet with me when I was visiting Paris this past Spring 2021 (which indicates that she did not even start to pass the Mark yet, more about this later), I do admire her work and her way of thinking and admire the way she shows up in the digital fashion leadership spaces. She is building something exciting for the digital/metaverse/NFT space, even though our visions may not align, while our attitudes do! I trust in her visionary gifts.
Honestly, this is FAR from what currently exists in the ecosystem set to support the digtial fashion revolution we are taking part in. There are multiple multiple start ups that I am aware of and personally touched and spoke with that are not on this list not because they are not important, but because I have so much capacity to feature projects and the reader has so much attention span. There are many emerging projects in body scanning and virtual try-on space, including spacial recognition and measurements solutions, maybe in the future I will add them on here. Feel free to reach out to me directly and ask to consider adding your project to this list as this article is obviously gonna be circulating in the industry for years to come, like all the articles I wrote before. Here is one some of them that may be helpful to come back to from a digital fashion mindset: Top Organizations & Start-Ups that are Building the Blueprints for the New Fashion Industry: Responsible, Circular, Transparent and Ethical
FINALLY, a curated list of Instagrams of the rising digital fashion stars that not many of us are aware of yet
Iris van Wees of Digi.go.amsterdam
This completes the up-and-coming digital fashion designers curation via Instagram. Feel free to DM me on Insta if you feel I missed someone who is not as well known yet and deservers my attention and consideration to be added to this list.
Links for your further research:
- Tracking digital fashion marketplaces via Trendhunter might be a way to go for some of us
- FFFace take on VR and AR transforming fashion
- The Powerhouse Interview with The Fabricant’s Amber Jae Slooten
- Arya Almeda writes about digital fashion on Medium up to their personal level of knowledge (unsatisfactory to us, yet good job for effort, here are the two recent pieces, yours to review: 1 & 2)
- Digital Fashion Week NYC YouTube & website
- Everyone from Gucci to Louis Vuitton is betting big on digital fashion. Here’s why they should proceed with caution — Fast Company
- The Limits of Virtual Fashion — BoF
- Is the LVMH consortium’s Aura ‘the first global luxury blockchain’ open to hacking? — Fad Magazine
- The Metaverse Will Radically Change Retail — BoF
- AI is blurring the lines between in-store retail and ecommerce — Techwire
- Virtual Fashion Platform RTFKT Studios Announces $8 Million Funding Round — BoF
- What the NFT Gold Rush Means for Fashion — BoF
- Virtual sneakers for 10,000 dollars? An exhibition gathers digital fashion pioneers — Fashion United
- What Are NFTs, Why Should Fashion Care and Will This Bubble Burst? — WWD
- What Gaming, Virtual Fashion Can Teach Real-Life Fashion About Tech — WWD
- Luxury’s Battle For The Metaverse — Jing Daily
- Will Gucci’s Digital Bag Disrupt Luxury? — Jing Daily
- Defining The Metaverse Today — Forbes
- H&M Unveils Virtual ‘Billion Dollar Collection’ Of Sustainable Fashion Solutions — Green Queen
- What Will It Take For Fashion To Truly Embrace Digital? — The Interline
- AR smartglasses in 2021: the devices, apps and new tech coming — Wearable
- Burberry Gets Into the NFT Game — WWD
- Following fashion’s meteoric rise in the gaming world — Nylon
- Complex turned its fashion and music festival into a futuristic video game — The Verge
- How 5G will change AR and digital fashion — Vogue Business
- Digital-only beauty: From gaming skins to Zoom makeup — Vogue Business
- Metagrail sells sneakers with virtual case — Playtoearn.online
- Balenciaga made a video game to debut its next clothing collection — The Verge
- The Factory is a new phygital venue in Fortnite — Creative Review
- Epic’s new tech could theoretically put your facial expressions in Fortnite — The Verge
- Staking Your Claim In The New Digital Economy — Interline
- You’re Sleeping on Crypto Art — Collab+Currency, Medium
- LUKSO (LYXE) — The Beginning of a New Digital Economy in Fashion & Luxury Retail — NSI
- Digital Fashion: The Fabricant Launches Atari-Inspired Collection as Enjin NFTs — ENJIN
- 3D at Scale: Achieving Consistency, Quality, and Agility in Digital Product Creation — Interline
- From Zoom to VR, beauty brands get creative with virtual launch parties — Glossy
- What ‘alone together’ meant for me in 2020 — Linkedin
- Fashion shows are now 12-hour live streams. Or movies starring mermaids. Or mailed to you in a box — Washington Post
- Smartphones are the new salesfloor — Vogue Business
- Designers explore the future of digital clothing — Vogue Business
- At This Designer’s Futuristic Fashion Show, Everyone Sits Front Row — Vogue
- Snapchat bets on augmented reality to win at social commerce — Vogue Business
- Rarible 2020: a Year in Review — Medium
- Can Fashion Cash In on the Animal Crossing Craze? — Business of Fashion
- Digital Fashion: A New Essential — Medium
- NFTs.tips database of NFT marketplaces and crypto art projects
- Balanced Fashion database of the new layer of physical fashion industry projects
This is all I wanted to share so far…Until next time, folks!
Please, please, dear ones, for the karma points’ sake, CLAP THE FUCK OUT OF THIS PIECE if you appreciate this work. Feel free to donate me in Newcoin, the only money I am willing to receive from you my crypto blessed souls.
Always and always, yours truly, madly passionate about this space until my eyes roll out of my sockets from the intensely higher than average for me at this point screen time because somebody had to complete this piece and I know noone who is better fit for this role then moi.
With care and love, bigger than you may be ready to receive,
