Vice’s creative agency, Virtue, began pitching the idea of digital fashion to emerging brands in 2019, after creating a sold-out digital fashion collection with Scandinavian retailer Carlings. The idea was to gift the collection to influencers and sell them to customers to both generate buzz and test a less resource-intensive approach to Instagram content.
Brands were interested, says Mortan Grubak, executive creative director at Virtue, but not necessarily in the idea of selling digital clothing itself. They were drawn to the ability to work with influencers without needing to give away actual goods for free. Small brands in particular were compelled by the money and resources that would save from sending out influencer samples.
“There is a sustainability problem when it comes to seeding influencers,” says Thinh Petrus Nguyen, senior art director of Danish brand Han Kjøbenhavn, who was part of those early conversations. “Because it is digital, you are one click away from the product.” While Han Kjøbenhavn hasn’t yet gifted digital samples, the brand used digital augmented reality filters to promote an upcoming jewellery launch. It was a success, Nguyen says, because there was already attention on the line six months before the items were produced.
Now it’s getting real traction: this month, Farfetch became one of the first large retailers to test the practice of digital sampling by digitally dressing influencers to promote the launch of its new pre-order offering from brands including Balenciaga, Palm Angels, Khaite, Off-White, Oscar de la Renta, Dolce & Gabbana, Nanushka, Casablanca and Nicholas Kirkwood.
By offering a better approach to sampling and shipping, digital fashion has a tangible, current-day application in fashion brand business models. It reduces some of the environmental footprint of sending goods to influencers and speeds up the process. However, realistic, 3D digital twins are not necessarily an existing element of brand workflows. “The challenge is getting into the process of creating these in 3D, because it’s not in the process right now — you have to put it in there,” Nguyen says. He notes that with tech giants making 3D assets more accessible — Facebook, Snapchat and Shopify among them — this will give brands the push to do it.
“It’s a use-case for the here and now,” says Carol Hilsum, the senior director of product innovation at Farfetch. “Without the digital fashion element, we would be sending them the physical samples to shoot. When you are trying to represent and showcase pre-order, it’s usually at a time when there is limited sample availability — usually there isn't a sample, it’s somewhere else or it’s in a certain size. Without [digital samples], it might not have been feasible.”
How it works
Farfetch worked with digital fashion platform DressX to digitise the garments and 3D creator Threedium to digitise the accessories, digitising a total of 20 men’s and women’s items from the pre-order collections. Each 3D render can be created in a variety of ways, says Natalia Modenova, co-founder of DressX. Digital files and patterns are a “best-case” scenario, she says, but items can be digitised based on photographs or scans. After each influencer selected their preferred look, they supplied multiple images to be digitally tailored by the DressX team; influencers were given guidelines on how to take their images and pose for digital dressing. Then Farfetch, DressX and the influencer reviewed the images to make any necessary changes.
Once posted, Farfetch and the influencers must disclose that the garments are digital. “We wanted it to be a key part, not a behind-the-scenes aspect of the campaign,” Hilsum says. “It was important in terms of showing the samples weren’t shipped, and we were carbon neutral. We weren’t shying away from talking about it.”
In addition to reducing waste, “It’s a way of testing if products are interesting enough for people to buy, before having a massive stock of samples that people don't want,” Nguyen says. “This is a super smart way of using technology.”
There are limitations to this approach, with some digital renderings based on scans or photos making it difficult to mimic fabric movement. Human touch is also still necessary to finesse the look and feel of clothing. However, the technology opens up more opportunities for influencers, Hilsum notes, because the same sample is available to multiple people, which also solves the marketing challenge of achieving plentiful, diverse campaign imagery.
Adoption has been slow
Already, Kering, LVMH and Richemont have turned to digital wholesaling and digital trade shows, which often require digital samples, while companies such as Burberry, VF Corp and Tommy Hilfiger parent PVH are starting to display digital items in customer-facing spaces, including e-commerce pages. However, most brands haven’t jumped at the idea of digital gifting.
“They are quite resistant. What you see is more creative work pushed by agencies, rather than the other way around,” says Gonçalo Cruz, co-founder and CEO of Platform E, which helps luxury fashion brands create and use 3D renders. “I don't have any doubts that doing digital product placement is better, because there's less logistics and human involvement, and 3D has reached sufficient maturity.”
Hilsum says that the brands whose products were digitised for pre-order were “very interested” to see how it worked and the outcome. Because Farfetch managed a lot of the process, brands had trust in the quality and how the products would be presented, Hilsum says. Going forward, she hints, it’s possible that Farfetch will continue to work in this way. “We don't tend to work on one-off proofs of concepts and tests,” she says. “It is a way of evolving and a way of working.”
DressX has received interest from additional brands, especially with the added focus on digital fashion seen in the past year, DressX’s Modenova says. “Having experienced working with emerging brands, it’s hard for them to afford gifting so much and competing on gifting,” Modenova says. “So digital fashion comes into play as a solution. Eventually, the more sustainable practices in fashion will include more sustainable influencer marketing.”
Other potential roadblocks include getting influencers to sign on to products they haven’t seen or touched in person, says Chloé Watts, founder and CEO of Chloédigital, which provides tech support for influencers and helps to target influencers who are receptive to the concept. Farfetch specifically targeted 10 global influencers and creators who had an affinity for digital fashion, a futuristic feel and aligned with the Farfetch brand identity, including “Emirati twins” @twinshadban, Korean artist @cheristyle_ and Kuwaiti artist @taiibbbaaa. Han Kjøbenhavn would be most likely to approach those who embraced digital fashion already.
“Our target audience is a little different; we don't really go to the obvious influencer. We’d rather have people who are culturally relevant and love our clothes, and our international community would love to test out digital clothing,” Nguyen says. “It’s new and it’s fun.”
“In the end, it's about the picture being posted,” says DressX co-founder Daria Shapovalova. “In the future, I believe every influencer will be able to choose between receiving the digital goods and a sum of money or a digital and physical item at a different cost.”
Additional reporting by Kati Chitrakorn
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