or collaborations with brands such as Puma, Under Armour, Buffalo London, Adidas x Karlie Kloss, and Australian Fashion Week. In 2019, it was the first digital fashion house to sell a digital couture outfit, the ‘Iridescence’ dress, as a blockchain transaction. The dress sold for US$9,500 during an auction in New York. In a recent statement, The Fabricant said the platform it is building would enable users to “become a digital fashion creator and participate in the digital fashion economy”. The team predicts that by 2025, there will be 100 million people interacting in the metaverse and wearing digital garments minted in its The Fabricant Studio platform. Sound Ventures investor Maaria Bajwa said: “The Fabricant is building a very user-friendly end-to-end experience that obfuscates the complexities of blockchains, while still giving users all the sovereignty and interoperability and distribution value that NFTs can offer. By being the first to tackle UGC (user-generated content) on the blockchain, The Fabricant is introducing entire new ecosystems to this community and showing them the power and value of NFTs for creators.” Technology accelerates digital fashion boom Digital fashion has emerged rapidly within the past five years, as the quality of software and platforms has greatly improved. Large brands such as Tommy Hilfiger were quick to incorporate 3D technology into the design and development stages, limiting the number of physical samples created, reducing textile waste. Burberry ramped up its use of CGI in advertising campaigns and 3D products for interactive websites. On the consumer side, digital fashion has experienced immense growth in parallel with the non-fungible token (NFT) boom and the convergence of fashion and digital gaming. As we move toward the metaverse, the focus will be on experienced digital fashion designers and platforms supporting the creator economy in collaboration with brands. “In the metaverse, we get to create a new playing field where everyone can benefit and enjoy the love for self-expression, and create an economy around it,” said Amber Slooten, co-founder and creative director at The Fabricant. “We’ve designed the tools to help construct a new fashion industry, one in which we believe we will all thrive.” Get real This year, we’ve seen not one but two digital fashion events. Digital Fashion Week New York and Metaverse Fashion Week in virtual-world platform Decentraland. Both events had mixed reviews, technical issues, and some resounding successes. But for mass adoption to occur, digital fashion and virtual environments need to look more like real life than Minecraft. “Decentraland and Sandbox were the early players in the space and the technologies they used make everything look voxelated. It’s likely when the creators developed these games they were not thinking of fashion or the user being aesthetically picky,” said Nico Fara, Founder of Queendom. As more companies and game developers build their version of a metaverse, they will feel increasing pressure to design high-quality 3D environments that enable photo-realistic garments and accessories to be used in real time. Wardrobe of the metaverse Last year, The Fabricant, along with dozens of developers and creators, was awarded an Epic MegaGrant. Epic Games’ MegaGrants launched in 2019 and have since supported more than 1600 creators and teams across 89 countries. The goal is to provide financial grants to creative, noteworthy, and innovative projects built in and around Epic Games’ game-design engine – Unreal Engine. Unreal is the second most used game engine, following Unity. Its advanced real-time 3D creation tool enables developers to produce photo-real visuals and immersive experiences. Pair this capability with Epic Games’ recent announcement that it will create a kid-friendly metaverse in partnership with Lego, backed by a $2 billion investment from Sony and family-owned investment company Kirkbi. Digital games are a multibillion-dollar industry that has caught the attention of brands worldwide. As virtual worlds are being created and people are drawn to them, content such as digital fashion will be a necessity. People will acquire digital garments and accessories to dress their avatars in a way that reflects their preferred identity. And with The Fabricant Studio creator platform woven into the mix, the digital garments being created will be superior to what we’re currently seeing – pushing the boundaries of fashion.  Significant investment into these platforms and tools is necessary to move beyond voxelated virtual environments and build new processes and ecosystems. Slooten said, “The story behind digital fashion is in need of a new narrative. One that leaves toxic behaviours and waste behind and looks into the 21st century and beyond.”  It’s going to take a diverse range of skills and backgrounds to ensure the metaverses we’ll be interacting in very soon set a standard that is established by experts in design, fashion, interiors, 3D, and animation, not just game design and developers. If you’re still waiting for a sign that digital fashion is here to stay, consider this: The role of digital fashion designer is now a legitimate career, with traditional designers choosing to upskill in 3D design programs such as Clo 3D, Browzwear, and Marvelous Designer. Digital fashion is a burgeoning industry, with many mainstream brands, such as Perry Ellis, Calvin Klein, Adidas, and Nike hiring specialist 3D designers regularly. It’s clear from the amount of money going to start-ups and the changing nature of upskilling that we are very much transitioning into the next phase of the digital era. And there will be a digital wardrobe with your name on it.