Last week I wrote about the coming of the virtual economy and how virtual goods, specifically digital twins of fashion products, can drive a new revenue stream for retailers. This week, I am taking a different perspective: Virtual fashion can be an economic equalizer to designers looking to build their own brands. Designer’s pay attention!
For someone who worked in the fashion industry for 10 years and witnessed many fellow designers try to launch their own lines, and not succeed, I am keenly aware of the financial resources needed to build a fashion brand. With over 2,200 designers graduating every year to a market that has approximately 700 positions available, two-thirds of graduates never end up working as designers. Add to the equation the number of designers who have the resources to launch their own brands and the numbers really plummet. In contrast, the most notable American brands launched came from celebrities or individuals with hefty financial resources (e.g., Ivy Park, Fenty, Victoria Beckham, Alexander Wang).
Virtual Fashion changes the game. Starting a brand requires substantial capital expenditures: purchasing of raw materials, manufacturing, labor costs, warehousing, and shipping. The only cost associated with a virtual fashion brand is the time spent by the designer. Soon, designers will have the opportunity to create and sell their designs online without the need to physically produce them. As mentioned in my previous blog, virtual goods already represent a $190B market according to CB Insights’ Industry Analyst Consensus. Designers have the opportunity now to rethink their career path and consider the virtual economy as a new channel to build and manage their own brands without the burden of capital expenditures.
3D development software for apparel like CLO and VStitcher is currently being taught as tools to digitize a garment for display and manufacturing. To me, 3d development is not a new tool but a new medium. Think of the advent of Photoshop. At the beginning, Photoshop was tool to touch up a photograph in a digital manner that added more control than the traditional darkroom printing process. Today, an entire industry of digital artists exists that create digital imagery only possible with Photoshop. The software created a new form of expression as a new medium for many artists. Digital fashion has the same potential. I see it as an opportunity to re-imagine what defines fabric and silhouette. Designs can be created that can only exist in the virtual world with textures and patterns of fabrics so complex or animated that they cannot be fabricated. Designers can imagine silhouettes that defy physical construction and deconstruct the definition of apparel. 3D software should not be limited to a physical production tool but exploited as a new medium by the imagination of designers to the future of fashion.
Designers now have the opportunity to participate in the virtual economy selling their virtual designs without the overhead of having to manufacture them. This is an economic equalizer. Imagine having your own brand and online store, selling your designs and clothes, and at what cost to you, the designer? A few hundred dollars to manage your website versus the hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce an actual apparel line. See where I am going? If these 2,200 graduates can’t find a job with a brand selling physical apparel, they can still fulfill their dreams of becoming fashion designers by designing and selling in the virtual economy. The virtual apparel market can become an economic equalizer by allowing designers with limited resources to build successful brands on par with the Fenty’s, Beckham’s, and Wang’s of the world.