Imagine a closet filled with clothing that automatically fits your body, always looks good in photos, and is sustainably and ethically made. That’s what virtual fashion is designed to do: Blur the lines between fantasy and reality by creating digital garments to be worn by your online avatars using 3D technology or edited onto images of your body using augmented reality. 

While the concept of selling virtual clothing is still relatively new, it’s not totally foreign. In May 2019, the world’s first piece of ‘digital couture’, an iridescent, translucent one-piece designed by Amber Jae Slooton, was sold at a New York charity auction for $9,500. 

And 2023 CC100 honoree Dara Shapovalova, co-founder of DressX, the first multi-brand digital fashion retailer, predicts that in the future, every fashion brand will offer a digital collection regardless of style or price point—similarly to how high-fashion luxury brands branched out to offer perfumes or accessories when the industry saw a rise in those categories. 

DressX was created as a “metacloset” for consumers and brands to easily access the Metaverse. Launched in 2020 by Shapovalova and Natalia Modenova, the digitally native company’s main goal is to offer every person in the world an infinite digital wardrobe for their online identity with no limitations on creative expression. The company just raised $15 million in Series A funding, which it plans to use to improve its app and NFT marketplace.

“Digital fashion offers a more accessible and eco-friendly way for customers to experience luxury fashion while still providing a sense of exclusivity and excitement that comes with wearing designer pieces in a digital space,” Shapovalova explains. 

A few pioneering fashion houses have already begun to pave the way for luxury fashion in the metaverse: Gucci, already well-known for its experimenting, released virtual sneakers while Louis Vuitton launched a metaverse game where players can collect NFTs.

But the biggest hurdle, when it comes to digital clothing going mainstream, is understanding what the Metaverse is and how virtual fashion exists inside of it.

Waiting for ‘meta fashion’ to have its moment

Purchasing in-game “skins” and cosmetics, used to customize characters, is nothing new to the gaming world. And now the fashion industry and its consumers are starting to take notice—Morgan Stanley forecasts that the virtual fashion market could be worth over $55 billion by 2030. 

“Meta fashion presents a great opportunity for the industry to reach new heights, open up new opportunities, create new markets, and become integrated into the digital creative economy,” says Shapovalova.

“The transition from traditional fashion to its digital form continues to take place in a natural way,” she adds. “It’s reflecting the overall shift in how we live and experience the world around us.” 

She describes how within this rapidly changing landscape, we are increasingly becoming “the avatars of ourselves” on various social media platforms, gaming, messaging, and streaming services, adding that “digital fashion serves to adorn our digital personas.”

Like media, fashion will have to embrace digital to survive

For luxury fashion to thrive in the next decade, brands will need to release their collections into a digital world where most young consumers are already spending or gambling with the chance that contemporary artists who are already well-versed in the online world will release some sort of variation before them, which recently happened to the French luxury brand Hermés.

In December 2021, digital artist Mason Rothchild released an NFT collection of faux fur, colorful variants of Hermès iconic Birkin handbag dubbed “The MetaBirkin.” After being sued by the famed fashion house, the court ultimately ruled against Rothschild in February 2023 when a nine-person federal jury in Manhattan determined that he had infringed on the company’s trademark rights. The jurors also found that his NFTs were not protected speech.

Virtual fashion paves the way for a more sustainable future

With the fashion industry being the second-most polluting industry, it’s been widely debated whether or not virtual clothing is a definite answer to its long-existing environmental issues. According to TechCrunch, an estimated 30 percent of all manufactured goods end up as waste within months of rolling off the production line every year. In a survey commissioned by the credit card company Barclaycard, nearly one in 10 UK shoppers (9 percent) admit to buying clothing only to take a photo for social media. 

Considering the current data combined with the continuous rise of fast fashion that only promises more waste to come, the benefits of digitally constructing fashion present a compelling opportunity for brands to reshape outdated business models and pave the way for a more sustainable future.   

Shapolvalova says that the production of a digital garment produced by DressX emitts 97 percent less CO2 and saves 3,300 liters of water per garment on average, compared to a physical one.

“By replacing just one percent of physical clothing with digital garments, we could save five trillion liters of water and reduce the fashion industry’s annual carbon footprint by 35 million tons,” says Shapovalova, citing a report by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. 

The reality is that as long as physical clothing exists, the industry will still likely struggle with the damage done to the environment. But if digital outfits can be used as more sustainable alternatives when it comes to things like content creation or building, introducing trendy, one-off collections, and building hype around brands, that damage could be reduced dramatically.

Looking forward to digital fashion

As Shapovalova explains, meta fashion will definitely shape the future of the fashion industry. Even though digital fashion cannot fully replace physical clothing in its current form, what it can do, she says, is allow us to continue to enjoy the fun of fashion while also making a meaningful contribution to the environment. 

And while an argument can be made that virtual fashion only exists in the digital space, robbing us of the tangible joy that physical clothing can bring—it isn’t any less real because of that. Virtual fashion opens up previously locked doors that lead us to very real experiences that are at the core of the traditional fashion industry: creativity and self-expression. While the clothing may not exist in real life, those feelings still do.