Would you pay $9500 for a dress you couldn’t physically wear?
Richard Ma paid that much earlier this year for such a garment. It cannot be touched or felt; instead, it is a digital dress that can only be layered on in a photo.
This sort of digital fashion, although still quite niche, has seen a rise in popularity in recent years as designers push the physical and cultural boundaries of space and time.
How Does It Work?
It might seem strange to buy a piece of clothing that does not exist in physical space.
Well, in order to actually wear your digital garment, you must understand 3D modeling. 3D modeling is when you change the edges and vertices of an object in a virtual 3D space. This method of warping reality has been used in animated movies, like the famous Avatar.
The 3D modeling software that is used in digital fashion is CLO 3D. It was created for fashion designers to simulate their dresses before converting their pieces into real clothing. But the buyers of digital clothing are downloading their purchased items through this software and using it to layer the clothes over a person in photos.
Digital fashion has not become commonplace just yet, but it may signify our direction of growth in a digitized society. Digital fashion allows artists to think beyond physical reality, giving them more freedom in being bold and outrageous. It also may lessen the effects of fast fashion, an industry where cheap clothing is bought quickly and thrown away, which is harmful to the environment. You wouldn’t have to buy a physical piece of trendy clothing and wear it once; you could buy a digitized version instead.
It might be that we will soon all be buying intangible garments only to be worn in photos.
Would you like to own a piece of digital clothing? Will the sense of touch be missed as we go digital?
Sources: BBC, Vogue, Lifewire, Elle, clo3d.com
