An inherently wasteful business, the apparel industry has a sustainability problem, but digital fashion can help significantly reduce its climate impact.
Fashion has a sustainability problem. It is an inherently wasteful business. Namely, the industry demands that we discard and/or replace functional products simply because they are no longer fashionable.
Fast fashion embodies some of the worst of this increasingly environmentally unsustainable industry. Ungodly amounts of clothing are wasted; much of it ultimately ends up unused in landfills.
However, an emerging sub-sector, digital fashion, can help significantly reduce the climate impact of the apparel industry.
Part of that nascent segment will be on display during Metaverse Fashion Week (MVFW), which follows its corporeal cousins, New York, Milan, London and Paris, starting March 24. Decentraland, a virtual social world, will reportedly host four days of digital/crypto/virtual fashion with much of the trappings of physical fashion weeks, including runways and after parties.
The growing popularity of digital fashion during COVID is likely related to a desire to move beyond the high-waisted and high-waisted Zoom styles popular in the pandemic. Another impetus: Consumers, too time-constrained by lockdowns that restricted access to in-person shopping, and with few opportunities to flaunt the fashionable clothes they could afford, sought out tailoring displays as a substitute that penalized shoppers. to be stylish and safe for COVID.
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In its many iterations, digital fashion is often a virtual representation of real-life clothing, sometimes physically defiant and often outlandish. Ironically, digital fashion probably harkens back to what could be the furthest thing from the rarefied air of mighty fashion houses. For years, online gamers, seen in popular culture as soda-guzzling basement dwellers, have spent tens of billions of dollars a year outfitting their digital environments with things, including clothing (skins) for their avatars in line. Digital fashion could be the populist expansion of that.
Digital fashion can be substantially more sustainable than its material counterparts. In some incarnations, virtual versions of clothing, optimally fitting a representative avatar, can be iteratively tried on in cyberspace until the desired, best-fitting garment is found and the physical version purchased. In this scenario, finding the right clothes the first time can substantially limit the environmental impact of the manufacturing and distribution processes.
Digital fashion will also sometimes employ technologies that record the details of a non-digital twin’s entire supply chain within an immutable blockchain ledger. This provenance, associated only with the physical garment purchased, can indicate whether the garment was produced through sustainable methods or in ethical work environments. This allows the consumer to vote with their feet for principled and environmentally friendly fashion.
In its purest digital form, digital fashion exists entirely online, increasingly as NFTs within the Metaverse. Here, fashionistas can scratch their fashion itch with minimal impact on the environment.
Digital fashion can also be a game changer beyond its sustainability benefits. The dematerialization of fashion will make elegant clothing accessible to the masses: digital representations of high-end clothing often sell for less than their physical equivalents. Technology has also lowered the barriers to entry, allowing novice designers to compete and even collaborate with established brands in the metaverse.
However, digital fashion is not without its problems. Many leading luxury fashion brands have isolated Russia as a result of the current invasion of Ukraine. While in the real world this has real repercussions, in the fashion world of the metaverse and cryptocurrencies this is largely ineffective in stopping the digital use of these brands by Russians in Russia.
And, like the physical out-of-the-box versions, counterfeiting is relatively easy and difficult to detect, if not easier and more difficult. Many brands may not even be able to legally enforce their trademarks in the real world in whatever the metaverse is legally. To make matters worse, Russia is reportedly no longer forcing locals to compensate many international brands for local use of their trademarks, further promoting counterfeiting in the metaverse.
Without real-life manufacturers and distribution networks, it can be difficult to identify and shut down sources of unauthorized sales and trademark infringement. Many established brands, who see a future for their fashion online, have already applied for trademarks in the metaverse to protect their cache in the virtual realm.
If dystopian sci-fi is any indicator of the metaverse’s future reality, we may one day see even the edgiest among us living comfortably in sweatpants while their avatars flaunt trendy and hopefully legal designs. line.
Prof. Dov Greenbaum is the director of the Zvi Meitar Institute for the Legal Implications of Emerging Technologies at the Harry Radzyner School of Law, Reichman University.
First published: 10:06, 03.22.22
Source: www.calcalistech.com