For Real?

What is virtual fashion and how might its development impact everyday life? Tatler investigates

- Richard Lord

Things we don’t have now but are likely to have very soon: genuinely wearable digital clothes; lots of people using metaverses; the ability to move seamlessly between them. Things we definitely do have right now: numerous big fashion brands experimenting with purely electronic outfits; a rapidly growing collection of digital‑only fashion brands; the relentless rise of NFTs. Add all those things together, and what it suggests is this: the business of digital fashion is about to explode.

Digital fashion can mean a number of things. It can mean digital versions or extensions of physical clothes; digital clothes rendered onto the bodies of real people; or clothes that are entirely digital, with no physical equivalent, which can be worn by digital characters or avatars on social media, in games and in metaverses.

The world’s first purely digital clothing collection was only launched in 2018, by Scandinavian retailer Carlings. Something similar has already existed for a long time in the gaming world, though, where players have long happily paid real‑world money for digital skins; market research company Juniper Research predicts that the market for in‑game purchases will be worth US$50 billion in 2022. But the ascent to mainstream cultural consciousness of NFTs, the blockchain‑based tokens that allow for proof of ownership, has tremendously sped up the business of digital fashion.

“With validation through blockchain, you can prove who owns it,” says Richard Hobbs, founder and CEO of Hong Kong‑based digital fashion agency Brand New Vision. “When Hermès makes a scarf, you don’t know whether they’ve made 100,000 or three. With blockchain, you know.”