Immersive Virtual Space and Fashion: a new paradigm for fashion Fashion is a field that relies on creativity, expression, and experience. With the emergence of immersive technologies, such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR), fashion is faced with new challenges and opportunities. How can these technologies transform the way we design, produce, consume, and appreciate fashion? What are the ethical, social, and environmental issues related to the use of Immersive Virtual Space in fashion? This article reflects on these questions, drawing on concrete examples of projects and initiatives that explore the potential of Immersive Virtual Space for fashion.
Immersive Virtual Space: a definition Immersive Virtual Space is a term that refers to a set of technologies that allow the creation and experience of immersive experiences in virtual or augmented environments. These technologies include VR, which offers total immersion in a computer-generated world, AR, which overlays virtual elements on the real world, and MR, which combines the two by allowing interaction with physical and virtual objects. These technologies use devices such as headsets, glasses, gloves, or sensors, which capture the user’s movements, gestures, voice, or gaze, and return visual, auditory, or haptic stimuli.
Immersive Virtual Space offers the possibility to create personalized, interactive, and multisensory experiences, which can stimulate the user’s imagination, emotion, and engagement. Immersive Virtual Space can also promote collaboration, communication, and co-creation among users, allowing them to share the same virtual space, or connect through different virtual spaces.
Immersive Virtual Space and fashion: varied applications Immersive Virtual Space can have multiple applications in the field of fashion, touching all stages of a product’s life cycle, from design to consumption, through production and distribution. Here are some examples of these applications:
Design: Immersive Virtual Space can allow fashion designers to design clothes or accessories in 3D, using modeling, simulation, or visualization tools. Immersive Virtual Space can also offer them the opportunity to create virtual collections, which only exist in the digital world, and which can be worn by avatars or virtual models. For example, The Fabricant label creates digital clothes, which are sold as NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens), unique and traceable digital tokens, which guarantee the ownership and authenticity of digital works.
Production: Immersive Virtual Space can contribute to making fashion production more sustainable, by reducing costs, waste, and carbon emissions related to the manufacture and transport of clothes. Immersive Virtual Space can also allow the creation of custom-made clothes, based on the measurements and preferences of customers, which can improve the quality, comfort, and satisfaction of consumers. For example, the start-up Unspun uses VR to scan customers’ bodies and create custom jeans, made on demand and without waste.
Distribution: Immersive Virtual Space can offer fashion brands and retailers new distribution channels, which can enrich the shopping experience of customers, and strengthen their loyalty. Immersive Virtual Space can also allow customers to access products or services that are not available in the physical world, or that are too
