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                                                      Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2XVFT7ep6M

 

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Where technological innovation happens, there is usually the interest of fashion visionaries too.

Although Synthetic Media is still at its initial stages, it already represents a compelling target for some fashion houses, such as Balenciaga. Last June, referring to the video you previously watched, the Parisian fashion brand decided to reveal its SS22 collection in quite an unconventional way. Indeed, the runway never took place in real life.

In the video, you also spotted multiple models, but these are in reality one single individual, “appearing as a series of digital clones with the model's photogrammetry-captured and CG-scanned face digitally grafted on” (Balenciaga, 2021, n.p.). The only tangible features are the garments from the brand's new collection, a unique exception in this synthetic reality.

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Fashion that looks ahead:

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Together with Synthetic Media, another progression in fashion is dictated by Digital Fashion, which refers to virtual garments that are digitally designed, as they are made from pixels rather than textiles, typically using 3D software (Ball, 2021, n.p.).

NFT clothes and AR clothing try-on technologies are two examples of digital fashion. NFTs are digital assets (digital clothes in this case) "which are connected to blockchain ledgers that give buyers and sellers proof of ownership and provenance" (Bauck, 2021, n.p.); AR clothing-try-on is any "3D digital clothing that automatically appears on a person while they move in real-time through Augmented Reality" (Mcdowell, 2021, n.p.).

Digital Fashion might be particularly significant in this context, as it can be integrated with Synthetic Media to provide useful solutions to fashion shoppers. As it is claimed on Ad Age: "women want to know how something will look and feel in real life, so showing a product in a static environment or on a model with an unattainable body type isn’t exactly helpful. Instead, give women the tools they need to visualize how a product will really perform" (Walters, 2021, n.p.).

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It is an indisputable fact that fashion is a cutting-edge and imaginative industry. In such a creative field, brands have the constant urge to stand out from the competition, experimenting and taking risks, under the pressure of constantly generating mind-blowing ideas. If we think of it as an industry that looks ahead, from another point of view, we must recognise that the fashion world is still quite rooted in the past, with outdated beliefs and obsolete conventions.

The following paragraphs investigate some of the industry's controversies that this project aims to tackle, and it also includes relevant discussions to be considered for the development of this project, and consequently, for the future of the fashion industry.

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Fashion that doesn't look ahead:

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Particularly noticeable in fashion adverts and catwalks is the unrealistic standard of beauty that idolises an extra-thin and tall body, flawless skin, and a stunning face. As stated by Paolo Volonté, this is anything else than a recent trend; concerning the 'thin obsession' that the fashion system is known for, historians claim that this phenomenon spread in the US at the beginning of the twentieth century with the advent of ready-to-wear clothes (Volonté, 2021, p. 89). The author adds that clothing manufacturers began to introduce sizing systems which accelerated the spread of mass-produced clothing, expanding to the rest of the fashion system after the Second World War. On the other hand, such systems promoted the standardization of clothes and the exclusion of larger or irregularly shaped bodies, being still approximate and based on a selection of few wealthy white women (Volonté, 2021, p. 89).

“To accommodate the needs of overweight customers, a specialized market niche soon developed: the so-called “stoutwear”, which refers to 'clothing for stout women'. (...) From the beginning, stoutwear was not conceived as the production of straight clothing in larger sizes, but of clothing capable of bringing overweight bodies back to within the standards of thinness that had recently become popular in fashion. This meant essentially masking, moving, dissimulating fat, which was considered a superfluous appendage to the 'normal' body" (Volonté, 2021, pp. 89-90).