According to digital fashion designer Amber Jae Slooten, people are discovering new ways to wear their online avatars, which has sparked a surge of interest in a virtual fashion, especially during the coronavirus pandemic.

“We got a lot of attention,” said Slooten, co-founder of The Fabricant, an Amsterdam-based virtual fashion house. “In my whole life, I’ve never dressed so many people.” Digital fashion, according to Slooten, allows people to play out their dreams digitally. She inquired, “How do we want to represent ourselves in the virtual space?” “Will we really try to be ourselves if we can do anything?”

According to visualisation creators, the increasing popularity of photographs portraying fantasy worlds that “give a chance to marvel and escape,” according to visualisation creators, mirrors the growing popularity of virtual outfits.

“With the current state of the world, the need for escapism is at an all-time peak,” Charlotte Taylor, an interior designer and artistic director, told Dezeen earlier this summer. Slooten spoke with Dezeen as part of a live panel conversation during London Craft Week. Slooten was part of a panel discussion called Textile Intelligence that included Seetal Solanki, the founder of London studio Matter, as well as textile artist Celia Pym and multimedia artist Lauren Godfrey.

The Fabricant, who Slooten refers to as “the world’s first global fashion house,” creates digital-only garments.

The bespoke pieces were painstakingly created using 3D modelling software and are designed to drape and shift as though they were alive. On social media sites, game experiences, and virtual worlds, customers’ avatars will “wear” the pieces. Slooten said, “We produce clothes that only exist in a digital environment and never exist in the real world,” adding that immersive fashion helps shoppers to escape the waste and pollution associated with conventional fashion.

“We’re attempting to build a modern fashion narrative for the twenty-first century, and we think we ought to look in the mirror and ask ourselves if our greed really wants to harm the world in this manner.”

The Fabricant’s garments were formerly manufactured to order. However, in April, the studio released a beta version of Leela, a new app that allows users to download a variety of ready-to-wear pieces for their online personas.

“There were about 10,000 people who used the app to wear these items, which was totally insane to us,” Slooten said. “For the first time, people were able to build their own avatars and wear our clothing.” According to Slooten, virtual fashion comes easily to the millennial generation because they create separate real-world and web personalities.

She declared, “I’m a millennial.” “I grew up on both the internet and physical media. On the other hand, the generation after us doesn’t know the difference between physical and actual.”

According to Slooten, people adopt different personalities for different digital platforms, each of which necessitates different dress codes. “The digital identities look different everywhere,” Slooten said. “Your Instagram profile, for example, could be somewhat different from your LinkedIn profile.

Kerry Murphy and Slooten, who graduated from Amsterdam Fashion Institute and became the first-ever fashion student to graduate with an entirely digital collection, founded The Fabricant in 2018.

“I’m a typical fashion designer,” she said. “At my school, I learned everything: how to knit, how to create designs.” But I was getting tired of all the materials I was using. I’ve never been a big fan of the physical aspect of life. “The physicality makes me ill,” she said, “because of all the materials we were wasting.” “I feel a tremendous sense of guilt for the industry’s prospects, which is why I began to doubt physicality entirely.” “And then there were no positions in that subject until I graduated,” Slooten said. “It also convinced me that I wanted to make it.”

Thanks to the pandemic’s prohibitions, the Fabricant’s first virtual collection was introduced with a multimedia display featuring simulated scenery and models, pioneering a style that several companies have since embraced.

Slooten explained, “We didn’t have to ship any set, we didn’t have to recruit any artists, and we didn’t need any models.” “We didn’t even have to go to the desert to take pictures of it.” Last year, the Fabricant made history by auctioning a virtual dress for the first time, which sold for $9,500.

“The new owner flaunted it on Facebook and Instagram,” Slooten said.

Slooten predicts that in the future, real-world apparel will become more technological and ecological, with smart fabrics that can serve as a second skin and track the body.

“I believe the future lies in smart materials that can grow with us or even grow on us,” Slooten said, adding that the real world would empower people to express themselves “in a more sober manner.”

Parallel to this, virtual fashion will allow people to express themselves more freely.

“Then we will go fully insane in the digital world. We can wear a water dress, have lights all over us, and change our textiles according to our moods.”

Slooten predicts that, in the future, technology will make the digital and physical realms indistinguishable, with garments that have haptic input, making augmented reality more like the actual world.

“And this raises a metaphysical concern,” Slooten continues. “Is it really possible? How can we tell whether the virtual universe sounds, appears, and behaves like reality if it acts, looks, and behaves like fact?”

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