CHAMPIONING CHANGE : PART 3
what does the metaverse really mean for fashion?
We’ve come out the other side of a global pandemic.
The year is 2045 and you’re walking to the local greengrocer for a pint of milk wearing a pair of glasses that share data about the people, places and things around you.
You run into a friend.
“Fire outfit!” you say, because your friend’s outfit is literally on fire. And while their Balenciaga couture cape is aflame, they seem totally relaxed about it. Because, when you yank those goggles off, you see that your friend is wearing no more than a T-shirt and sweatpants.
We saw that eye roll. This scenario is one possible vision of the metaverse.
Considering fashion as an artform, the metaverse appeals to the artists desire for fantasy, the absurd and the supernatural. But the fact is, we’ll be entering these digital worlds, at least initially, through our laptops and will still be wearing that cobbled together WFH pyjama suit, with a cuppa and digestive in hand, in real life...
There’s already an entire fashion-technology industrial complex springing up to cater to whatever dressing needs avatars will have now and in the future.
There are digital-only fashion brands — more than 100, for example, on DressX alone, a virtual fashion boutique opened in 2019 by Daria Shapovalova and Natalia Modenova.
Digital styling games like Drest, owned by Farfetch, the digital marketplace-turned-conglomerate, offer the ability to play with hundreds of digital outfits, many also available IRL.
There is also a growing number of ready-to-wear brands testing out virtual versions of their collections on various virtual platforms and creating metaverse business units staffed by fashion school graduates trained in virtual design.
The future of the industry lurks on a Web3 blockchain.
But how did we get here? And are we any better off for it?
Yes and no. Yes because digital fashion holds the power to revolutionise the way we make, buy and reuse clothing.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
The metaverse, at this stage, is still a far-flung concept. So we want to steer brands along the most realistic and achievable route to implementing digital fashion.
Digital fashion offers the opportunity to sample and visualise clothing pre-mass-production very realistically, that is one thing that will greatly reduce our environmental impact. It may curb people's appetite for more clothes and 'fast fashion fixes', and instead encourage investment from brands to adapt cost structures and make each step of the value chain better, faster, and cheaper.
For example, digitization can enable new logistics and sales-fulfillment options (such as click-and-collect and drive-through), fuel innovative ways of customer acquisition, and help predict and manage inventory to create a more resilient supply chain. The fundamental enabler to all this will be data—the transparency, governance, and accuracy of which have never been more important.
Thus, the imperative is clear : make digital and analytics a core element of your company’s strategy.
But we’re not suggesting you invest in a multi-million pound digital strategy that bankrupts your fashion brand.
We’re encouraging realistic progression like using digital channels to launch genuine, purpose-driven communications with your audience, building digital collections before physical production and end-to-end digitized production management. That’s a start.
So if we look at the production cycle, let’s start at the very beginning. Where brands would usually start with 2D sketches and develop pencil and paper ideas into physical product samples, 3D completely turns this process on its head.
1. PRODUCT DESIGN
Many brands use 3D software tools such as CLO 3D, Browzwear, and Marvelous Designer to design and model their clothes virtually, bringing life to fabrics before they enter the physical world.
It’s resource-efficient, and a process that mitigates the wastage that comes with creating physical samples - more often than not an endless process for brands at an early stage of evolution. There are many others out there on the market, but let’s take a look at one of the most popular options for digital product development, CLO 3D.
The technology visualizes users' creations with the ability to create unlimited graphic placements, colourways and engineered print layouts, while accurately emulating drape-sensitive fabrics, reducing lead time for an average of 27 hours compared to 37 days without CLO, and offering a 55 % sample adoption rate compared to 15 % without CLO.
In terms of sustainability, the digital solution CLO3D offers is well on it’s way to revolutionizing the fashion supply chain we know today. For instance, physically, you might only have a few chances to try out different silhouettes. You mostly work with a limited number of fabrics.
With computer programming, you can do multiple iterations in a matter of minutes — and it is just a drag and drop. If you want to try out a cotton jersey-based shirt in leather, you just click to change it. If you want to add a pocket, copy and paste.
A lifelike and high-quality digitally designed piece will surely inspire new ways of marketing products and engaging consumers. Digital fashion is opening new marketplaces and a new meaning to the ways in which fashion can be consumed.
2. PRODUCTION AND MANUFACTURING
That leads us to on-demand production. This new digital era has encouraged agile made-to-order production cycles. The result is likely to be a rise in just-in-time production, reduced levels of overstock, and an increase in the importance of small-batch production cycles.
The result?
A much more sustainable outcome that puts fast fashion on a much slower, more holistic trajectory.
But the real challenge is the bigger picture for the fashion industry; integrating 3D digital product creation across the whole supply chain with an end-to-end real-time connected manufacturing system that gives brands, retailers, and suppliers complete control over the full product lifecycle, from purchase order to fulfillment.
For small brands and in fact larger ones too, it’s a huge task. But given the fact that fashion is set on an industry-wide digital transformation, businesses exist to make the change seamless. Like PlatformE, for example, a technology platform that connects POS to production and shipment in real-time, providing scalability, full visibility and production efficiency.
The bottom line is, digital fashion - in whatever form it may take - is a trend that’s set to stay the course.
Today for many brands, it’s implementation may be at the back-end - in design and prototyping but soon, as larger brands are already proving, digital will soon become a consumer-facing tool. It might be difficult to predict what’s coming down the runway in five years, but we already have a good idea of what to expect for customer experience.
3. RETAIL EXPERIENCE
Let us ask you this: would you spend real money on virtual clothes? It’s a contested topic. How about, would you use a virtual experience when buying fashion to improve your choice? More likely.
In addition to online and social shopping, experiential retail is set to be another big part of the retail industry in the next few years. Despite the decline of in-store shopping and the rise of the internet, the desire for retail experiences is rising as more consumers are investing in experiences rather than products.
We only have to look to luxury fashion’s leap to the metaverse to find proof of this. The likes of Gucci, Balenciaga, and Burberry are already spinning up fashion and accessories that you'll never even wear.
But back to planet earth, immersive retail experiences - or retailtainment as it is also known - is taking shopping to new heights by giving brands the chance to provide more intimate and personalised experiences than ever before. It’s built into the community-orientated and individualised approach that retail has adopted in our post pandemic world.
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There’s no doubt about it - when it comes to the future of fashion, it lies in technology.
Whilst it will take some time for the clothing industry to completely adapt to new innovations and trends, one thing’s for sure:
The new generation of retail is here.
Let’s face it, brands are under pressure to stay relevant and survive in this rapidly changing industry. But we can only make progress towards onboarding innovation if we open ourselves to experimentation, learn lessons and find the right solution through a process of trial and error.
Brands should always be in a test-and-learn mode, and the digital landscape in particular requires intellectual curiosity.
