Digital fashion: Merging self-actualisation with joyful escapism
This post will dive deeper into the benefits of digital fashion, why it is essential for web3 and what the future will bring. You can also find a summary of the most meaningful moments in digital fashion of the past week at the end of this post.
How did digital fashion begin?
Yes, we wear garments to keep ourselves warm and hide our naked bodies. But we also use it to express our emotions, moods, cultural backgrounds, and interests to give people around us a first impression of who we are.?
"What you wear is how you present yourself to the world, especially today when human contacts are so quick. Fashion is instant language." - Miuccia Prada
People have loved to immerse themselves in video games for decades to have fun while escaping everyday life. Fortnite, for example, has become a pioneer in the digital fashion world, offering users the ability to buy so-called "Skins" and accessories. Those allow for enhanced fighting abilities or to change one's visual appearance.?
Like in the physical world, people are looking to express their identities digitally. What do we use our Social profile picture or an Instagram account for? Self-expression. People take photos of themselves and others and display their identities and lifestyle, regardless of whether they are the same, similar or different to IRL (in real life).?
New brands and designers
Let's look at how the NFT movement impacts digital fashion from a designer's perspective. We see as one of the most significant benefits that everyone who has access to the necessary hard and software can become a fashion designer. Using the power of social networks, designers can build a community of supporters online and reach groups they would not be able to IRL (in real life).
Web3 enables small and medium fashion brands who previously faced barriers such as retail store and production costs to establish themselves and build a community of supporters without physical presence. Successfully building a community around one's brand means giving people a sense of belonging, eventually transforming them into loyal supporters.?
Established brands
Digital fashion also presents opportunities for already established brands. These include reducing production costs by testing fashion concepts virtually, therefore avoiding waste and saving monetary and environmental resources.?
Existing brands can take the relationship with their customers to the next level by providing loyalty rewards, giving customers the feeling of being part of a brand instead of a "faceless" consumer purchasing their products.?
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The emerging concept of DAOs (Decentralised autonomous organisations) can allow brand supporters to actively take part in the organisation's decisions by purchasing a token serving as a brand membership. More about fashion DAOs here.
Sustainability?
Digital fashion comes with lower emissions than physical goods as production and shipping create high emissions, fabric waste and water pollution. The digital garment will not end up in the trash; instead, buying a digital piece of clothing can be a valuable investment. As with "traditional" NFTs, the customer speculates a rise in value over time. As one cannot wear a digital item off over time, which is typically the case with physical garments, its value will not decrease over time.
Wearing your garments
We buy digital fashion to dress our digital avatars to express our identities in the metaverse, a more immersive iteration of the internet. Digital fashion can be experienced entirely virtual or merged with our physical appearance, as shown by digital fashion pioneer DressX. The company created an augmented reality app that allows users to overlay their fashion pieces onto their physical bodies and create content with them. Consumers can now generate content with their digital fashion, which blurs the line between digital and physical wearables.
The fabricant is a digital-only fashion house creating digital fashion collections in collaboration with other artists, allowing users to buy and mint fashion pieces on their platform. One of the first fashion houses to merge science and technology with physical couture is Auroboros, who opened MVFW (metaverse fashion week) in March 2022 on Decentraland in collaboration with the electronic/ dream pop singer Grimes.
A week in digital fashion:?