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What’s Digital Fashion and How Does It Work?
Is Digital Fashion the Way Forward?
Fad or Not: Virtual Clothes Online
What Are Digital Clothes and Where Do They Belong?
What Are Digital Clothes and Have They Found Their Place?
Digital clothing is gaining popularity in gaming and social media. Influencers love showing off outfits, but it limits how many times you can wear an item before it gets “old.” Digital outfits help you avoid wearing clothes once for a picture and then discarding them.
Tapping into virtual fashion for the benefit of your avatar in various games is a fun way to express yourself and give your character a hint of uniqueness.
And what about the metaverse? It’s sure to require digital clothes, right?
Let’s take a closer look at digital fashion and how it fits into the online world.
Have you ever read Ready Player One by Ernest Cline or seen the movie?
The story depicts a futuristic world where people live their lives mostly online in a place called the Oasis. It’s safe to say their lives revolve around the Oasis, a metaverse that allows an escape from the real world.
You create a character to represent you in that cyberspace. Your avatar looks how you want it to, meaning you can change its clothes, style, and overall look to fit your preference. It’s you in the online space.
Today, we’re still a long way off experiencing the type of metaverse depicted in the fictional story. However, as we’re already living in the metaverse, the fashion aspect of the metaverse is already more fact than fiction. So, how will digital clothing and digital outfits come to life online and in the metaverse?
You may not care about fashion, follow trends, or bother with fancy outfits, but clothes are a part of daily life.
Digital clothing caters to people who care how they look, both in reality and online. It’s the answer to the question: If I have a say on what I wear in the real world, why shouldn’t I have the same say regarding the online one?
Virtual fashion can either be displayed directly onto an avatar or worn using augmented reality. Digital fashion is making a splash on social media apps like Instagram and Facebook, and the gaming field is also dabbling with virtual clothes.
It’s all very exciting and new, so let’s take a closer look.
Virtual Fashion Meets Gaming
Virtual fashion in gaming is becoming more and more prevalent in recent years.
In 2019, Louis Vuitton collaborated with Riot Games for the League Of Legends World Championship. There were original in-game skins along with various digital assets, and also a bespoke travel case for the Summoner’s Cup trophy.
In 2021, Balenciaga collaborated with Epic Games and its massively popular Fortnite, offering its players a chance to enjoy some digital fashion. Among the creations were Balenciaga back blings, pickaxes, and other items that allowed players to express themselves through their avatars.
In the same year, 2021, Gucci partnered with Roblox to create the virtual Gucci Garden experience. It allowed Roblox platform users to wander the Gucci Garden and have their avatars view, try on, and purchase digital Gucci items, much like they would offline, except it’s all online.
The virtual fashion collaborations mentioned above go along with a hefty price tag. For example, the Gucci-Roblox collab led to someone purchasing a digital Gucci bag for 350,000 Robux, or around $4,000. That may hinder some enthusiasts, let alone the risk of item theft in online games. However, as the concept evolves and becomes more mainstream, prices are sure to reflect that.
Virtual fashion doesn’t stop at collaborations with major fashion brands, though.
Nowadays, many games allow their users to craft unique outfits for their avatars using digital fashion. One of the most prominent examples of this is the game Animal Crossing from Nintendo.
It lets players replicate pieces from their favorite brands by downloading the designs for their characters in-game at no cost. You can have your avatar match your real-life outfit if you want. After all, virtual fashion’s biggest selling point is how it allows and encourages self-expression.
If you have the chance to buy something unique and have your avatar become more special and distinctive, why wouldn’t you?
Digital clothes aren’t only for avatars. Real-life people have dipped their toes in the trend, as well, and have donned virtual pieces to display on their social media feeds. The process of showing off a digital piece online is a bit more complicated than merely paying for it and seeing your avatar wearing it immediately.
Suppose you want to participate in the trend. In that case, you first have to select the item you wish to “wear.” Then, you typically have to send a picture of yourself already posed and ready for posting, pay for the piece, and wait to receive back the photo with the digital clothes superimposed on yourself.
In cases where you don’t have to send a picture of yourself, you usually download the item and, using 3D software, manipulate it onto yourself how you like it. There are digital accessories, shoes, dresses, jackets, anything. Instagram is getting more and more posts under the digital fashion and digital clothes hashtags, and browsing through them, you can see some pretty fun pieces.
Virtual fashion can be pretty affordable. You can find items to purchase starting as low as $20 and reaching up to the hundreds.
Also, that avenue gives you freedom for creative expression. You can experiment and dabble with unrealistic fashion and display pieces that would never work as well in the real world. Digital fashion allows you to show off an outfit you’ve never touched, and that’s quite fascinating. Not to mention, you don’t have to worry about clothes waste and sustainability or about you not fitting in the garment.
Like with anything, there are pros and cons to digital fashion. Given how it’s developed in recent years, it’s interesting to keep track of the progression and see where it goes.
Fashion Goes Digital: Get With the Times
Today we spend more and more of our lives online.
You can order pretty much everything online and have it delivered to your door. FaceTime, WhatsApp, and other similar apps revolutionized the concept of seeing your friends and family and keeping in touch. There are countless dating apps. Many switched from working at an office to working from home, communicating with others through a screen.
People have devoted a large chunk of their lives to the online space. As times change and technologies evolve, the online world is likely to become even more enticing. Companies have already declared they’re working on an Oasis-style metaverse to entice users into spending more of their time in the virtual world.
Virtual fashion just seems to be a natural product of the times we live in currently.
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