The Fashion Industry Is Transforming Towards Virtual Reality

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Events such as London Fashion Week have begun live-streaming catwalk shows to build a virtual reality experience that people can attend from their sofa. Read how fashion’s biggest brands are debuting new collections on a VR catwalk, where designers are creating virtual sculptural garments that attendees can interact with after the shows, then digitising the fitting rooms to allow for more online shopping.

By Pragati Verma, Contributor

This is not your typical fashion show.

There are no catwalk models, no live audience or front-row celebrities. Instead, guests’ digital avatars enter the Museum of Other Realities (MOR) to experience the immersive fashion show, The Fabric of Reality, through virtual reality (VR) headsets. They move along a winding purple carpet and enter the showroom showcasing the creations and stories of three designers curated by London College of Fashion’s Fashion Innovation Agency (FIA).

Here, visitors can wear and interact with sculptural garments in virtual how to save australia number in whatsapp interactive rooms. Throughout the show, neither the designers nor the visitors are limited by the rules of the physical world. They can fly, float in space, or change size like Alice in Wonderland. They can even enter the minds of the designers as they interact with each other.

The interactive and immersive digital format is an opportunity for fashion shows to go beyond just showcasing designs, according to Sam Field, head of creative technology and innovation for EMEA markets at studio RYOT . RYOT, Verizon Media’s Emmy-award winning production company, co-created the show with Kaleidoscope, MOR and FIA. “They can take the audience into their world. Our designers created virtual sculptural garments that attendees could interact with, but they also created storyboards to tell the stories that inspired their designs,” he explains, “Often, you see new garments and designs, but the story of the artist behind them gets lost.”

“We deliberately avoided creating a digital replica of a catwalk show – we weren’t asking ourselves how to make it as real as possible,” says Field. Trying to make it as real as possible is the biggest stumbling block of VR shows, he continues. “Why be limited by physical boundaries when you’re in a virtual world? Make it native to that environment.”

For Fields, the virtual reality show, which was presented in London but will be available online to audiences around the world for 12 months, was a success. “Around 150 people experienced it live in VR simultaneously and more than 360,000 watched the live stream in the next 24 hours,” he says.

Haute couture goes digital
The Fabric of Reality may be one of the pioneers in creating a fashion show using Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality, but it is not the first digital fashion experience on the catwalk. Fashion Weeks, staple events on the haute couture calendar, are embracing digital formats.

Paris Fashion Week , which ended in March at the Louvre Museum, was the last physical show this year. London Fashion Week pivoted to digital, with virtual showrooms, podcasts, films, and webinars. China Fashion Week had a livestream on sponsor Alibaba’s e-commerce platform, where viewers could like, comment, or click to buy. And that’s not all: Several high-profile brands, including Chanel, Hermes, Burberry, and Dior, are embracing the format and creating shows that can be viewed via livestream.

Why are so many fashion brands breaking with tradition and going digital? Field says that while they are “transforming to fit into the post-pandemic era, there are larger issues” at play. According to him, the fashion industry was rethinking its fashion show format long before COVID-19 put an end to physical gatherings. “As the pandemic has forced runways to be cancelled, it also uncovered how a number of brands were unhappy with the way the industry is putting on events,” he says. Several brands, such as Yves Saint Laurent and Gucci, were already abandoning the fashion show season. “It’s become clear in recent years that they haven’t enjoyed the intense pressures and expense of Fashion Weeks,” he adds. As collections become digitalised and attendees are remote, these virtual runways are leaner and far less wasteful, Fields notes.

But there’s much more to digital than just cutting costs. Fields believes that interactivity and social elements heighten excitement. “The VR experience is not about seeing, hearing or reading. It feels like you’re there and part of the experience.” She explains how attendees can drop by and chat with a designer’s avatar as if they’d met at a party. And this, she adds, can democratise access that has typically been reserved for celebrities and influencers. “The fashion industry can be very closed off. But here, everyone is animated and no one is judged by how they look or how they’re dressed.”

The new frontier of fashion
While several brands are embracing VR, he laments that most have yet to “break through the end-to-end digital transformation that immersive, 3D content and experiences can bring.”
The idea, he says, is to make the discovery and purchasing process more experiential. “If they integrate VR and other immersive technologies to create an experience, where you can see a piece of equipment in the virtual realm and your avatar can try it out. And if you like it, you can choose to buy it within the VR world, and then select it to take home,” he elaborates.

In the future, as VR becomes mainstream, it will open up many similar opportunities for fashion houses, he says. And until then, he hopes experiments like The Fabric Reality will set fashion brands up to create “truly immersive experiences across the supply chain, from design to display to sale, whether at shows or in stores.”