#017 Can Digital Clothes Save Creatives?
digitally native promises, fashion as a form of protest and the DFDC
Thumbnail is a new segment from This Outfit Does Not Exist. As a complement to my technology deep dives, thumbnails are a shorter, more personalised, set of musings on the future of fashion and tech. If this sounds exciting please:
This week’s thumbnail looks into how digital fashion has measured up to its pledge to forge a creative utopia. It was written from Tbilisi, whilst wearing a top from Lado Bokuchava and a skirt from ukbac.
The thumbnail
I celebrated my 29th birthday in Tbilisi — the capital city of a former Soviet Republic with a population of just over 3.7 million.
Unlike my friends, it was not the promises of Khinkali, or a night at Bassiani, that drew me to Georgia. Rather I was attracted to the country’s emerging fashion scene which spawned Demna Gvasalia, (Balenciaga’s creative director/ Vetements co-founder) and his brother Guram (Vetements creative director/ co-founder) alongside emerging designers like Gosha Rubchinskiy, Georga Kiburia, Aleksandre Akhalkatsishvili and my personal favourite Lado Bokuchava.
Since the first Tbilisi Fashion Week in 2015, magazines like Vogue, i-D and DAZED have dubbed the city one-to-watch, as Georgian designers increasingly feature in global boutiques like SSENSE and H-Lorenzo and on celebs like Kanye West and Kylie Jenner.
But don’t let that make you think being a designer in Georgia is easy.
Sandwiched between Russia, Turkey, Armenia, and the Black Sea, Georgian fashion is choked by regional politics.
Described by Nathalie Tocci, as the clearest example of growing polarisation between East and West, since its post-Soviet independence in 1991, Georgia has been rocked by tensions between its right wing pro-Russian government and a new European-leaning liberal class.
Tbilisi in particular has become a place of protest. With 20% of Georgian land occupied by Russian troops, and the governing party violently opposing ‘liberal Western values’, nightclubs and monuments have become fighting grounds for LGBTQ+ expression and free speech. And so has fashion.
Vetements SS19 collection saw models walk the runway in balaclavas (a garment frequently seen on Russian soldiers and in Tbilisi clubs), and bullet-emblazoned tees. The same season renowned Georgian brand The Situationist hosted their Spring/Summer show at Bassiani – a nightclub that doubles as an emblem for liberal Georgia. Renowned as a place for techno, queer expression and heavy drugs, Bassiani has become a target for the right, and a symbol for the left. After its most aggressive shutdown in 2018 mass-protests broke out across the capital.
Whilst Georgian politics has inspired collections, for creatives working in Georgia the political climate cripples growth by:
Derailing fashion infrastructure – November 2023’s Tbilisi Fashion Week (now renamed Culture Days Tbilisi) was cancelled by its founder Sofia Tchkonia, following political unrest. Even upon its May return, designers like Aka Prodiashvili were having their ‘skin and eyes burnt from tear gas’ in 50,000 strong protests, alongside juggling interviews and shows.
This dynamic makes it hard for Georgia to reliably establish itself a go-to spot on the international fashion circuit. As well as creating uncertainty around Culture Days’ timing it makes buyers reluctant to visit. According to Tchkonia, the Culture Days that took place in May 2023 had ‘just one buyer from Italian luxury retailer Modes and one from Neiman Marcus' in attendance.
Restricting designer mobility – as a result of its government’s Russian-leaning stance, Georgia is yet to become an EU member state, with sanctions and restrictions mounting with each of the ruling party’s repressive moves.
This lack of EU alignment means that Georgian’s are unable to travel to Europe without a visa. This curtails Georgian designer’s abilities to reap the benefits of fashion capitals despite a mostly international client base. Plus it adds additional export/ import costs to any clothes they sell through international retailers.Raising production and distribution costs – to add insult to injury, Georgia’s textile industry is near nonexistent, and manufacturing talent is hard to find.
Many Georgian brands face low margins, as materials and producers have to be found outside Georgia. The Situationist is one of the few brands that produces their collections in house, and even for creative director Irakli Rusadze this curtails brand growth. In an interview with Vogue, Rusadze said he ‘wouldn’t want to get too much bigger because it’s hard to find people to work in the studio’, as the lack of a dedicated Georgian fashion school results in ‘a lack of young, technically able talent’.
So how does this relate to digital fashion?
Like many others, I was drawn to digital clothes as a solution to the kinds of problems Georgian designers face.
In a perfect world, clothes that can be produced online at close to zero cost, that can move freely across the internet and reach millions without needing a catwalk, would solve the problems of these talented creatives fighting to break through.
But following digital fashion’s false start in 2023, my trip to Tbilisi jolted me into questioning whether digital fashion’s promises of a creative utopia really measured up to its current reality.
The double click
To make this section simple, I’ll break down a designer’s work into three parts: 1) getting started — acquiring skills and creating collections, 2) getting seen – garnering brand visibility 3) getting sold — selling clothes to consumers.
A cursory glance across the state of digital fashion shows that while the industry has made good on some of its promises, other commitments still need extensive work. To elaborate:
GETTING STARTED:
THE PROMISE: digital fashion promised a world where anyone could become a designer. With 3D tools such as CLO3D and Blender taking the place of expensive degrees and high-cost studios, and production lines no longer required.
THE REALITY: unless you’re fortunate enough to attend Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts (238 euro per year for EU students, and 976 euro per year for internationals) subscriptions to CLO, Blender and
’s Patreon, are cheaper than a fashion degree. Plus for those who see the opportunity cost of 100+ hours learning 3D as too high, Roblox offers a simple low-code way to design and sell pieces. Just look at House of Blueberry, or Rush Bogin!
GETTING SEEN:
THE PROMISE: optimised for social media, instantly accessible to influencers and stylists, with new fashion weeks promising viewers in the millions, digital fashion vowed to get designers’ work seen, no matter where they are.
THE REALITY: due to the nature of the technology, digital fashion is indeed a hack when it comes to getting designer’s clothes where they want them. A recent experiment by my company DRAUP, which invited anyone to wear our work, saw close to 400 people dressed in less than 3 months—with 0 cost of shipping. Designers like XTENDED IDENTITY, 888vampires, and Yimeng Yu have used this strategy to build renown, attracting investment, celebrity clients, not to mention mainstream editorial interest.
When it comes to magazines, 2021 saw digital fashion strewn across Grazia, Elle and Vogue. Whilst digital fashion features are now less common than they once were, there’s still some interest from fashion’s global editors. The recent launch of Vogue Adria saw a spread on digital fashion platform Tribute Brand which featured double-paged models in digital fits (pictured above). However, as Metaverse interest wanes, it’s not all fame and glory.
Digital fashion weeks promised a new digitally-democratised way for designers to showcase their collections, but they've faced steady atrophy. Metaverse Fashion Week, for example, saw a sharp drop in attendees from 100,000 in 2021 to just 26,000 last year. And with reports that its host platform Decentraland has just 42 daily active users, we can only expect these numbers to decline further.
GETTING SOLD:
THE PROMISE: with digital currencies driving billions of dollars in transactions, digital fashion promised to open designers up to new markets, allowing them to circumvent shipping costs and tariffs, reap rewards from royalties, and sell big with a new consumer group no longer tied to their physical forms.
THE REALITY: no matter what anyone says about the Metaverse, digital fashion is still alive and kicking. In the first three quarters of 2023, close to 1.6 billion items of digital fashion and accessories were sold on Roblox marketplace with one Adidas necklace going for a reported $20,000 USD.
However, despite consistent moves towards the legitimacy of crypto, the NFT boom that promised new platforms, novel consumers and programmable royalties is stalling. At least for now.
Partially due to our post-lockdown physical existences, partially due to crypto’s bad reputation, and partially because in our current ‘bear market’ digital goods are not as lucrative as they once were, sales of digital fashion NFTs are in sharp decline.
And even for those who turn to Roblox—or any of the other games which make up the $81 billion USD market for digital goods—where digital clothes are easy to make creators face high market saturation. In the first three quarters of 2023 more than 13 million 2D and 3D digital clothing designers were reported to be selling on Roblox. And though 19% of Gen-Zers are willing to spend $50–$100 a month on additions to their virtual closets, the micro-prices of most in-game goods, mean making a living from in-game clothes is likely untenable.
So how do we move forward?
Zooming out
Earlier this month WWD announced the launch of the Digital Fashion Designers Council (DFDC) a non-profit led by David Cash, with the mission to weave ‘digital fashion into the traditional fashion ecosystem’.
Spanning technologies to improve brand experiences, events to further the visibility of digital creators, and boards of digital fashion designers and execs, the organisation seems rife to gather up the balls digital fashion has dropped and put them back into play.
Turning back to Tbilisi, the roadmap of the DFDC can be paralleled to the infrastructure Tbilisi Culture Weeks’ Sofia Tchkonia has been building in Georgia for the past 15 years.
Leveraging her connections and resources Tchkonia runs competitions like BeNext for emerging Georgian talent, invests in young designers through the Georgian Fashion Foundation, and launched Tbilisi Fashion Week in 2015 without any backers because she saw that Georgian designers ‘couldn’t go to Paris, London or New York’ as ‘nobody wanted them there [back then].’
As digital fashion vies to cross the chasm between 2020’s excitement, and the mass-adoption of the coming years, my hope is that the DFDC will help build-out a world where digital designers are taken seriously.
With those like Nick Knight (legendary photographer and founder of SHOWstudio) and Bettina von Schlippe (Vogue Singapore’s publisher) on board, the DFDC is poised to move digital clothes from a place of interest to one of adoption. Only when this shift takes hold will digital fashion become a space that allows emerging creatives to circumvent their circumstances, and reap the rewards of our digital world.
Here’s hoping.
– Dani 👽
A QUICK NOTE: I’m fortunate to be a DFDC council member, and will be curating a showcase of digital designers for LFW and NFW next month. If this sounds interesting to you, or if you want to learn more about the DFDC more generally, please send me an email at dani@thisoutfitdoesnotexist.com
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
Georgia is on the frontline of the struggle between Russia and the west by Nathalie Tocci for the Guardian
Amid violent protests, Tbilisi's designers aren't giving up by Lucy Maguire for Vogue Business
Tbilisi’s bid to rebuild pre-pandemic fashion momentum by Lucy Maguire for Vogue Business
Digital Fashion Designer’s Council Debuts with Fashion Week Connect Events by WWD
Vetements SS19: Demna Gvasalia confronts the civil war in Georgia on Demna’s blog
At This Techno Club, the Party Is Political by The New York Times
Who’s Really Driving Georgian Fashion? Not Demna by Business of Fashion
Luxury giants Loewe, D&G, Diesel rally behind new digital fashion initiative by Bethanie Ryder for Jing Daily