Dress up your avatar: digital fashion
20.11.2020
The first digital fashion house was born..
“Non sprechiamo nulla oltre ai dati e non sfruttiamo niente se non la nostra “We waste nothing but data and consume nothing but our imagination.” This is the motto of The Fabricant, the first digital fashion house born in the heart of Amsterdam. In 2018 it was launched by Kerry Murphy and Amber Jae Slooten, the first to graduate from Amsterdam Fashion with a digital collection. “I studied as a traditional designer,” she said. “I learned everything in my school; how to sew how to design patterns. …I got terribly worn out with all this stuff. I never really enjoyed the physicality of things.”In fact, The Fabricant’s models are made to dress avatars in video games or to be worn in photos on social networks.
The first digital dress auctioned for $9,500.
During the coronavirus pandemic, interest in virtual fashion increased: people scoured the web for ways to dress their avatars. The Fabrican’s Iridescence dress was sold at auction for $9,500. “The new owner exhibits it on her Facebook and Instagram,” said Slooten. The Fabricant’s dresses are made with 3D modelling. They are not designed to be worn in realitybut only in virtual space. The Iridescence dress after the buy has been reshaped on the new owner’s body. She was satisfied with the exclusive purchase, but expressed the desire, in the future, to enjoy multiple opportunities to use the dress, not only in social events.
A innovative point of view on sustainable fashion
“We try to design a new fashion narrative for the 21st century because we really believe that we need to look in the mirror and see if our vanity really needs to damage the planet in this way.” The Fabricant’s clear message speaks of sustainability from an innovative point of view; if we spend a significant part of the day in the virtual world, why continue consuming raw material in the material world, disrupting the ecosystem. The virtual world has no physicality, there are no limits to the designer’s creativity. Digital fashion makes it possible to design clothes with particular details, which can be modified without producing waste.
