digital fashion essay

What is Digital Fashion? The Ultimate Guide

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From Big Tech boardrooms to podcasts and tweets, the metaverse hype is everywhere. However, as with many emerging technologies, the excitement around the expected future impact often outshines its  actual  readiness for mainstream adoption.

But even among all the hoopla, it’s foolish to dismiss Web3 and the metaverse completely. Within the next decade, emerging technologies might change life as we know it. In the same way, the television and the internet democratized access to information and entertainment, the blockchain and the metaverse will change the way we shop, game, and craft our digital identities.

Whether physical or digital, fashion is a core layer of our being. It serves as one of the purest forms of self-expression while acting as a direct extension of our emotions and beliefs. As humans, we care deeply about our appearance and as we spend more time in virtual environments, the same behavior is expected to continue. By 2030, Morgan Stanley estimates that the digital fashion market alone  could be worth $50 billion .

While this prediction is ambitious, and far from a guarantee, industry leaders have recognized the potential and are already beginning to invest heavily in the trend:

• Nike  acquired RTFKT and announced  the launch of CryptoKicks , alongside their own  virtual world  in Roblox
• Rebecca Minkoff  partnered with The Dematerialised  to release a collection of NFT dresses, hoodies, and accessories.
• Bob Iger  invested an undisclosed sum into Genies , a company that produces metaverse-ready digital avatars for stars like Jennifer Lopez, Rihanna and Lil Nas X.

With that in mind, there’s a compelling case that the winners of this emerging sector could be sound investments for years to come.  But before we even think about investing, it’s important to cover the basics of digital fashion.

What is Digital Fashion?

Digital fashion is virtual 3D clothing designed with both humans and digital avatars in mind. Rather than using fabric and textiles, digital garments are created with special 3D computer programs like Blender and CLO3D.

Relative to traditional garment manufacturing, digital fashion is inexpensive and wildly sustainable. More importantly, it comes with zero creative constraints or production limitations. This is where the true beauty of digital fashion shines. The only limits are our imaginations. We don’t  need  to be the same people online as in real life. We can be whoever we want to be.

According to  Jackson Bridges , NFT Project Advisor and Showcase Guide at  Alterrage digital fashion allows for a new medium for individual expression.

“In the metaverse, we can decide our identities compared to the physical world in which we cannot choose our race, gender, or cultural background. Digital fashion builds upon this idea by enhancing self-expression outside of the constraints of the physical world and by leveraging technologies such as augmented and virtual reality. The ability to express themselves with limitless creative freedom unlocks doors for a true expression of one’s identity,” he shared in an interview with Kiplinger.

To date, digital fashion has been most prevalent in gaming, where gamers pay billions of dollars annually to outfit their digital avatars in the latest cosmetic skins. Epic Games, the company behind Fortnite, sold 3.3 million units of their NFL partnership skins,  netting $50 million in only a few weeks .

How to Wear Digital Garments

Outside of gaming, digital dressing is the most practical way for shoppers to showcase their digital style. By altering photos and using advanced technologies like augmented reality and artificial intelligence, consumers can wear  their digital garments.

For digitally-native apparel retailers like  DRESSX , digital dressing is built into their business model. Customers who purchase digital garments from DressX can upload a photo to the platform to digitally dress in their new look. For social media influencers who often spend thousands of dollars on an outfit only to return it moments after a photo is taken, wearing digital fashion offers a much more efficient and cost-effective alternative.

Snapchat, a leader in augmented reality technology, has offered a variety of AR filters since its inception. Snap has also  partnered with companies  such as Prada and Ulta to offer customers virtual try-on experiences, resulting in substantial sales lifts. To encourage more retailers to adopt AR-powered ecommerce, Snapchat has made its proprietary technology free to use. Now retailers can seamlessly integrate Snap’s AR try-on technology and Camera Kit into their mobile apps and websites.

Platforms like VRChat, Decentraland, or Roblox allow users to create digital avatars and dress them in virtual clothing, enabling them to explore and interact within online worlds.

Benefits of Digital Fashion

Digital fashion offers several benefits that contribute to its growing popularity and impact on the fashion industry:

• Sustainability: As digital fashion eliminates the need for physical production, it helps reduce the fashion industry’s environmental impact, fostering a more sustainable future.
• Creative Freedom: Designers can experiment without the limitations of traditional materials, production methods, and costs, resulting in innovative and groundbreaking designs.
• Accessibility: Virtual garments can be more affordable and accessible than their physical counterparts, opening the fashion world to a wider audience.
• Interactivity: Digital fashion provides consumers engaging experiences through interactive mediums such as virtual fashion shows, augmented reality, and virtual try-on sessions.

Real-World Examples of Digital Fashion

Several fashion brands, designers, and tech companies are embracing digital fashion to create innovative and immersive consumer experiences. Some noteworthy examples include:

• The Fabricant: A digital fashion house that specializes in designing and selling virtual garments, leveraging blockchain technology to tokenize their creations as non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
• Gucci: The luxury fashion brand has entered the digital fashion realm by launching virtual sneakers and collaborating with gaming platforms to create exclusive in-game garments.
• Moschino x The Sims: The Italian fashion brand Moschino collaborated with the popular life simulation game, The Sims, to create a capsule collection of virtual garments that players could use to dress their in-game characters.

Why Is Digital Fashion Important?

To fully recognize the importance of digital fashion, you must first understand the desire for digital identity and ownership. Among digitally native generations, there is strong demand for digital ownership and the ability to express our identity the same way we do in real life.

Based on a  report from BoF Insights , approximately 70% of US general consumers (Gen Z to Gen X) rate their digital identity as important. And they’re voting with their wallets, with 50% interested in purchasing a digital asset in the next 12 months (gaming skin, digital fashion, avatar, and/or NFT.)

While still incredibly early, digital fashion is positioned to be a significant revenue driver for apparel retailers. Over the last year, brands such as  Gucci ,  Tommy Hilfiger , and  Dolce & Gabbana  have invested millions of dollars in opening virtual metaverse storefronts where they’ve sold a mix of digital fashion NFTs and NFTs redeemable for physical goods. The virtual stores also allow customers to shop through on-site ecommerce collections.

As explained by  Nico Fara , a retail Web3 strategist and founder of  Chief Metaverse Officer , virtual stores in the metaverse aren’t replacing traditional retail channels, but are instead serving as a much-needed complement.

“In the same way that retailers need a brick-and-mortar or ecommerce store (Web 1.0) and a social media page (Web 2.0), they should have a metaverse presence (Web 3.0). Virtual stores in the metaverse are more efficient, immersive, and accessible than any other retail experience.”

Digital fashion is set to reshape the fashion industry, offering sustainable, creative, and accessible solutions while allowing consumers to engage with clothing in a new and immersive way. As more designers, brands, and consumers embrace the digital fashion revolution, the industry will continue to evolve, providing unique experiences that challenge the traditional boundaries of fashion.

Like all new tech trends, there will be companies that invest in the hype for PR and quick cash. But there will be others that make digital fashion a core part of their future retail strategy. Whether the winners will be legacy fashion and tech companies, digitally native retailers, or a combination of both, only time will tell. But when industry players of this caliber all make a move, it’s generally one worth paying attention to.

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Pulling the Virtual Wool over Your Eyes: An Essay on Virtual Fashion and Control

The last five years has seen the fashion industry express significant interest in the possibilities arising from the integration of cloud-based software in the design process. This software, like CLO Virtual Fashion Inc .'s 'CLO', allows designers to cut, sew, drape and simulate garments digitally, present them in a virtual environment and produce them on demand afterwards. This essay will take a moment to question the rosy mist of opportunity associated with this transitional time — assessing at what is at stake other than a departure from the currently broken industry.

THE CURRENT OUTLOOK

The newfound popularity of virtual fashion can be felt in the  surge of press in the last year , with  headlines such as ‘Virtual Fashion: The Digitally Generated Clothes Appearing On Your IG Influencer Feeds’ and ‘ Fashion meets Fortnite ’. This promotional push relies heavily on buzzwords, association with other industries like gaming, social media influencers and promises of a fantasy landscape where you can consume and share just as much, but now without any consequences. Educational institutions are also getting involved — setting up courses and training staff to equip students with the skills they will need to meet the new industry standard . Looking deeper into this community, past the congratulatory echo chamber chat of events or social media (like, announcing that we have open sourced desires or how we are living the future), we can see that the foundational values are being laid for this emerging branch of the fashion industry. Two recent cases of success in this area give a taste of what's to come. 

The first example comes from Amsterdam-based ‘digital fashion house’ The Fabricant .  Founded in 2018, they state that they are “envisioning a future where fashion transcends the physical body, and will be a leader in the movement that uploads the human to the next level of existence.” In mid-2019 the house announced they would be selling the “world’s first digital couture” —  a dress called ‘Iridescene’ —  in an auction at the Ethereal Summit in New York, collaborating with Dapper Labs (creators of CryptoKitties ) and artist Johanna Jaskowska. Reporting on the auction, Forbes explained The Fabricant’s process after Iridescene is purchased: “There is a 28-day window for the couture’s new owner to provide a photo of the future wearer to the creators in order for them to custom fit the digital garments. As a blockchain digital asset, the unique existence of the garment makes it both clothing and (crypto) currency”. The founder of Dapper Labs, Roham Gharegozlou, also notes that “Iridescene hints at the superpowers of decentralization playing a role in fashion as it belongs fully to its owner, is impossible to copy and is portable”. 

In an instagram post about the successful sale of the dress for $9,500, The Fabricant stated: “What if the garments you create exist outside ideas established in the 19th century?...This is the story of Mary, the owner of the first digital couture dress on the blockchain EVER. Welcome to Thought Couture”. Alongside this text, the same transparent garment seen on Jaskowska in the promotional image above is seen, but this time as an animation, superimposed over a photograph of Mary. 

In an interview with PI Apparel (below), Kerry Murphy — the founder of The Fabricant —   unwittingly showed the bubble this discourse is taking place within: as while he mentioned there was a $10,000 pre-bid as well as talk about how the sale could reach 6 figures, Iridescene was ultimately sold for $9,500 and Murphy was left with mixed feelings.. This ambivalence is further shown amongst fashion and tech communities in the comment sections across The Fabricant’s  socials and articles on the house, with a steady vacillation from critical musings on how sale was merely a publicity stunt, to swooning over the thought of being gifted such an item. Murphy attempts to account for this  by relating virtual fashion to the initial reluctance to adopt the internet and email - stating how these technologies are commonplace  today.

Various reactions to the dress over different media. Click on the different messages below to navigate.

A similar story is found in Scandinavian retailer Carlings, who have also cashed in on the growing appetite for consumers to be clothed virtually with Vogue business reporting that they: “sold out of a digital clothing collection in a week”. The collection, named ‘Neo-Ex’ , released in partnership with the artificial influencer ‘Perl.www’, is made by “a process which involved digital tailors manipulating customers’ photos so it appeared that they were dressed in the apparel - which cost up to €30 per piece.”  The garments have names such as ‘Thunder Jeans’ and ‘Cloud Chaps’, accompanying the clothing on their dedicated website (now defunct) is a text down the side stating ‘Zero% environmental impact’ (note: no asterisk follows that statement) and a footer speaking directly to their Gen Z Tech-engaged demographic with: ‘DROP ONE EXPIRED, DROP TWO LOADING’.

While also drawing inspiration from the sale of skins in the video game Fortnite — another link from gaming to this sector —  Carlings’ CEO Ronny Mikalsen stated the reason for the collection: “We know that we have a lot of influencers out there creating this fake reality that is not available for the everyday boy or girl, and we challenge that, and say, hey it's possible”. This fake reality is confirmed on an instagram post from user ‘@aiiidaa’ featureing  the ‘Cloud Chaps’ (also tags, links and hashtags to Carlings) stating: “Y’all still wearing physical clothing while I’m rocking a cyber-outfit here in 2038 👽 ”. Carlings shared the post, adding a P.S. reassuring their followers that the physical clothing in the picture would also be available soon. 

Reactions to Neo-ex addressing some of the obvious confusion. Click on the different messages below to navigate.

The BBC, however, reported that while “Mr Mikalsen says Carlings has sold between 200-250 digital pieces… a search to find them on Instagram only resulted in four people who independently purchased from the collection and had no involvement with the company”.

So what can be taken from all the above examples? Well, firstly, as there is no value in virtual fashion those with interests tied up in its success are trying to construct it. With Iridescene, we see Jaskowska on a New York rooftop with  a portrait of Andy Warhol in the distance. Read as: latching onto all Warhol signifies , while reducing him to a prop in a styled background. This is an attempt to elevate the abstract spectacle by blurring virtual fashion into art to inflate the value of worthless pixels. As  The Fabricant " make money by servicing fashion brands and retailers with their marketing needs, selling tools, and creating content that uses that aesthetic language of digital fashion ", it makes sense that they are pushing this cleverly crafted moment of publicity.

If The Fabricant wants to be seen as the Warhol of this industry then Carlings must be the  replica printed t-shirt equivalent that they want you to wear with no understanding of what it means except the social capital it brings. This is an equally dangerous path - relying on the slot machine of social media, hoping for the images they fabricated to be consumed and forwarded in order to profit off the Gen Z group who are already exhausted from living in fraying patchwork of ‘fomo’, anxiety and depression. 

With all this said it’s the caption on Iridescene’s sale seems newly poignant:

“What if the garments you create exist outside ideas established in the 19th century?”.

Are these 21st century ideals along the lines of a husband buying his voiceless wife a dress, using her to simply breathe life into it, inflating it’s value, alongside that of his company, while it simultaneously wraps her up like the object she has become? Using falsified ‘sold out’ strategies to urge a young generation to conform to the homogenized demands desperately trying to be created, hoping it will result in later sales? Or is it that virtual fashion cannot escape becoming a commodity and the above is acting as an emblem for remaining in the system we are already in? 

Looking back to 2016-2017, around the time of this new industry’s  initial emergence, you will find Swedish brand Atacac being discussed for their unique pattern cutting and using 3d visualisations to present garments before being produced. They were repeatedly touted as the future, the first to create a brand completely around virtual fashion technology and subsequently gained press such as “ATACAC USES GAME TECH TO DISRUPT THE FASHION SYSTEM”;  and giving us a sense of deja vu with regard to  the narrative we are being sold today. Looking at the brand now, they've switched to mainly physical communication, feature in sample sales and use digital  technology to release “ Nine Unique Garments where only your imagination sets the boundaries ”. What happened to Atacac will happen to The Fabricant, Carlings and the rest who are selling this current utopia under the headlines of using technology for good and the incredible impact it could have on the fashion industry. They will, at some point, just work themselves back to the same industry they are currently seeking to distance themselves from, all while convincing the consumer to purchase more garments that they don’t need.

SOFTWARE/PLATFORMS

The examples of The Fabricant and Carlings have one key thing in common: the use of software. In Cutting Edge: Technology, Information Capitalism and Social Revolution software is defined  as: 

Software in essence consists of instructions for performing a particular task, and a major technological key to the growth of computing was the creation of means by which these instructions could readily be stored and fed into a machine, which by its nature, simultaneously hides and reveals itself as it works. 

The user's knowledge of how software really works could be related to the consequences of ideology on the public’s grasp of social reality. Increasingly, software is now extended one layer further away from the user as it is based in The Cloud . Cloud computing is a term which has been around since the early 2000s, which essentially means the delivery of on-demand computing services - from applications to storage and processing power, typically over the internet and on a pay-as-you-go basis. Per Google CEO Eric Schmidt in 2004 : 

I don’t think people have really understood how big this opportunity really is. It starts with the premise that the data services and architecture should be on servers. We call it cloud computing—they should be in a “cloud” somewhere. And that if you have the right kind of browser or the right kind of access, you can get access to the cloud. 

Cloud computing does not describe a single thing —  rather , it’s a general term that describes a variety of services , from infrastructure as a service (IaaS) at the base, through platform as a service (PaaS) as a development tool, to software as a service (SaaS) replacing on-premises applications. Within the creative sector, it is in the software of Adobe where this shift to the cloud has been felt the most. Across the creative industries, Adobe’s software has been — and remains — dominant (as we see in the prevalence of Photoshop/Indesign/Illustrator/etc. file types): with users trained in and more or less dependent upon the company’s software ecosystem . Where before a user could purchase a version of the Adobe Creative Suite and use it at any time for all time, since 2013 users have been required to pay a subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud , effectively converted from owners into renters. And over the last years we have seen SaaS move beyond standalone software to become a platform. 

Platforms are all around us. Nick Srnicek, author of Platform Capitalism , states that  

“...a platform is the intermediary between two or more different groups. We might think here of early market squares, but the platform as a model has really taken off with digital technologies in the past 10 years. Facebook, for example, is an intermediary between advertisers on the one hand, and users, software developers, and companies who create pages and chatbots on the other. Facebook brings together all these different groups and gets its value from them. 

Benjamin Bratton, writer of the Stack, explains this further, how platforms induce users to behave according to the platform’s regulations and capacities — certainly while using the platform, but sometimes even in advance of joining it: “They provide an armature and induce processes to conform to it,” he writes. “People are oiling the economic machine; they make the mechanism run smoothly”.

A platform therefore can be said to rely on user participation, with the total value of the platform being directly linked to the number of participants. As Rudolf Müller (Professor in Quantitative Infonomics at Maastricht University) notes , “Platforms have to work hard to get the first critical mass of people and starting from zero is difficult. This is why we will see a pre-existing network being brought into the digital.” Expanding, then, Srnicek’s example of Facebook, the platform’s origins in American university campuses shows how this can be key to growing a large user base. We see a similar phenomenon in the case of virtual fashion, with the form of the work and the method of distribution currently being reshaped towards a platform; combining creation, display and feedback. 

CLO - THE PLATFORM OF VIRTUAL FASHION

Searching for ‘virtual/digital fashion software’ on google shows us  where the platform of virtual fashion is located - in  CLO. CLO is a cloud-based 3D fashion design software developed and marketed by the South Korean company  CLO Virtual Fashion Inc . Originally a cloth simulation technology called ‘Marvellous Designer’ that found popularity within Cosplay communities and the CG/Gaming industry, CLO was launched as a program specifically for the apparel industry a year after.

CLO website at 25.09.2020 (left) and 09.05.2012 (right).

A company snapshot on the Business of Fashion websites quotes CLO: 

CLO Virtual Fashion is a world leader in 3D garment simulation technology. With more than 10 years of research and development in garment simulation, we envision our technology to become not only the tool to create virtual garments, but also the platform to provide valuable data about garments, designs, and trends, by virtualizing every garment on Earth. 

CLO’s website explains further: “our products range from CLO, Marvelous Designer, Virtual Fitting Platform, Communications and Archiving Platform for virtual garments, to Real Time Draping Engine for games to create a new ecosystem for virtual garments”. To use CLO, software licenses can be purchased on a variable  individual, business or enterprise tariff. The personal use license is available for $50 per month or $450 annually. The personal license allows the user to sell the items created with the software, but companies must purchase the more expensive enterprise license. Looking through  the store, such items as $50 avatars named Harper, Cole and Mason, $2 suit hangers and all the fabrics one is  used to in the real world  (polyester, cotton, etc.) can be found.

Virtual products on sale

In recent years the communication of CLO has changed drastically — coinciding with their rapid growth within Europe. Viewing their landing page in 2013 it states how CLO ‘is an easy to use 3D apparel CAD’ with a simple pattern piece as an image. Now — after a “a 121 percent increase in European regional sales growth and almost a 300 percent increase in European user growth”, per Businesswire —  a visitor (at the time of research) is met with a bold piece of text stating ‘DESIGN SMARTER’ , and a divider named ‘ the scoop ’, where there are 4 recent articles promoting a paid entry CLO user competition, the new software version 5.2, a Facebook live event and a webinar explaining about the new features in 5.2. What can be noted here is the push towards the user: a spew of ambiguous phraseology in the theme of ‘designed just for you’ and ‘be the first to experience’. CLO's blog, in contrast, focuses on community — with a recent post introducing their ‘power users’ and  sharing their positive feelings towards the software, describing  CLO as a “family” and “ that there is no limit to what’s possible” in the platform.  

Speaking to an employee of a 3D company,  she noted that “CLO is similar to Adobe for being user friendly, although as a company CLO wants to own the industry - it’s closed off . They don’t listen to what the user needs, but just assume what would be cool”. A similar sentiment is shared by looking into the comments across their socials, with their community saying: “Pricing still is ridiculous. $50 a month or $450 a year, it's obvious you're only targeting corporate companies. I could totally see using this for 3d content sales, but that price for licensing is a joke”, and another asking “Is the participation fee too high?” regarding their most recent design competition where general users are charged $25 to enter. 

Speaking to an ex employee of CLO, she said: 

When you work for CLO essentially you are selling software. You are selling an illusion - a way of working. What matters in the very end is that you sell software. In the last 5 years the developments have been insane, and the workload was really high. In my second interview I was asked by the CEO what I was willing to sacrifice for the company, and after answering ‘my time’, I was told it was the right answer. This growth has really shown with the reduction of players in the field as a couple of years ago there were so much more. For example if you look at a company like Lectra who were once a big deal in virtual fashion they have clearly lost and are long gone.  One thing that I was never happy about was working with the big fast fashion companies, as I feel if you use 3D you should use it to make the product better and not to make more - instead of just crapping out more products in less time. I cannot say numbers but say a fast fashion buys a large amount, i’ll say ‘x’ amount of licenses, compared to Atacac who only have 3 - then of course CLO push the narrative of a brand like Atacac to represent their values, but in the end they need to make the money.

This push for user participation, increased control of the market and guise of a community isn’t surprising to Sangeeth Choudary — the author of Platform Revolution —  who notes : “Through network effects it means platforms tend towards a winner-takes all model. More and more people on board which consolidates their position - resulting in a massive, closed, expansive company which is difficult if not impossible to dislodge”. 

Given platforms’ tendency towards monopoly and the explosive growth of CLO’s userbase, questions arise as to  whether CLO (if it becomes the de facto standard for virtual fashion) will follow a path like that of Adobe , encouraging their users to assemble an environment around themselves which they will later be trapped inside —  leaving the future of fashion to be found in a CLO .zpac file.

BLURRING BOUNDARIES OF EDUCATION AND INDUSTRY

With a large part of fashion education being shaped by the  demands of consumers and industry, it’s no surprise that educational institutions are also involved in virtual fashion. This is shown most clearly on CLO’s website where under ‘clients’ you will find a lengthy  page of University logos, covering institutions from the U.S. to China. But how does education itself react to virtual fashion? The Amsterdam Fashion Institute (AMFI) describe themselves as “unique in education on 3D virtual prototyping and developing a high level of products and performance”- with this mainly taking place within their course named ‘ Hypercraft ’. In conducting a survey amongst students who had completed  the course, many noted the prior pressure to learn CLO3D, but now feel they have an advantage in the industry having developed the skills. 

With regard to the software’s ease of use, one student commented: “CLO is easy to understand and learn. It's like playing a video game because you have results very quickly and can see every change you make”. Another noted its comparison to Instagram with “high amount of stylized visuals, and popularity where you can make something on screen look a lot more attractive as in real life”. Regarding concerns around the software it was said: “Teachers are definitely biased towards certain software. They want you to learn the softwares they can teach you as otherwise they might feel useless and get insecurities around the purpose of the minor”. 

Another student highlighted the hazards of the software: The school is trying to become relevant again, and in doing so has become completely reliant on the software. There have been times when we can’t login into CLO so all just sit there clueless on when we can work again, and other moments where AMFI have just updated the software and all our work is messed up.” This difficulty to login was also seen in one Hypercraft class’ Whatsapp group where students tried to troubleshoot how to login to the programm, ultimately  saying: “There is probably a CLO class right now, with to many people working on the server..It's really annoying and clear that the licences are not enough anymore.” 

Even with some pitfalls, the ease of use and fast learning curve has given rise to various short courses for this type of skill. Alongside Hypercraft students can enrol in a two week summer course (costing €1,100.00) where you can learn to ‘empower yourself and gain ‘results that will be of interest for your portfolio’. On one teacher even advertised private courses (8 days priced at €1200) to her community of students, with a similar sentiment of “Be ahead! Join us!”. 

Finally an email sent out at the end of 2019 shows this is quickly becoming the status quo: “Building on the success and experience of the minor Hypercraft, AMFI proposes to develop a one-year international master in Digital Fashion in partnership with PVH-STITCH, Burberry and CLO.” 

AMFI teachers promoting their personal virtual fashion courses to students.

Is this then just business as usual, with education remaining as merely a submissive facilitator for the actions of big brands of the industry? In the previously-quoted  interview with the ex-CLO employee, she gave an insight into how this will work with software, noting in the case of AMFI they are hesitant to speak up about any issues regarding virtual fashion as they are stuck between two companies. “On one hand they still have free equipment and licenses from Lectra, but now have to pay for CLO - so they [AMFI] have created a false narrative where they tell students limitations in each programme to make sure both are used.” She then mentioned that  “CLO make sure that educational institutions have to give a ‘pay of appreciation’ for the software to ensure they are more likely to use it and implement it into their curriculum - meaning all students leaving will be trained in that.”

CLOSING THOUGHTS

The work of The Fabricant, alongside Carlings’ desire to allow the creation of a “fake reality for all boys and girls”, should stand as cautionary tales of how this new industry will operate. The system will not change because garments can now be shown via pixels, but will merely be a new layer on top of the one we already have. The emerging venture capital funded startup culture is currently creating an unstable bubble filled with influencers and manipulation, leaving the industry — after it’s inevitable bursting --  looking towards another innovation to become the answer. Behind all this will of course always be the software companies, who after constructing communities of users, will jostle to lock them into an industry standard and extract rents. 

With their Adobe-like approach to the market including a glut of tutorials, intuitive UI, high social media presence and strategy of targeting students it seems that CLO3D are leading the charge for this ‘standard’ and it’s only a matter of time before any discussions of alternatives will seem futile due to the monopoly they will hold. This will force all those who enter virtual fashion, from students into freelancers into compliance with their .zpac file type. 

With the largely positive  press surrounding virtual fashion  and fashion institutions’ broader desire to not be left behind, it’s no surprise many are enthusiastically welcoming the promise of this technology. Luring us in by showing us its ability to reduce and eliminate barriers of entry —  with those who have no prior skills entering a ‘gamified’ way of creation and believing the power is now in their hands to don themselves with no limitations except how many likes they will receive once shared. 

Yet while we remain within the framework of fashion (capitalism) we will not only fail to accomplish these ends, but exacerbate the problems already existing —   perhaps one day we won’t even own the items we are told to consume. With all this said, now more than ever it is time for education to come to maturity with the technology it is using. I believe there is still a small window of opportunity for fashion schools to come together collectively, forming joint conditions of usage relating to all software providers. This will not only ensure a safe and responsible digital environment for future students, but also remove the fear of retribution that software companies are hanging over their head. Now is the time to act instead of churning out an assembly line full of graduates for the industry standard they are helping to create.

Tom Robertson explores the intersection of systematic searching and co incidental finding in his archival project 40th formula. He graduated in International Fashion & Design at AMFI in august 2020. This essay was based on his BA thesis. 

The City Yet to Come: Transindividuation and Becoming in Future Queer Space

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The Wild Arrival of Digital Fashion

By Yang-Yi Goh

You wake up, yawn, stretch, ignore the texts from your uncle, and open your closet. It’s time to decide who you want to be today. Your Gucci sweater and Burberry trench hang neatly above a row of pristine Nike sneakers. But today you’re feeling somewhat less…human…and more like a highly intelligent mollusk. You spot the eight-armed hoodie you copped for this exact occasion. Today, you’re going to be an octopus.

Welcome to getting dressed in the metaverse, where your daily ritual of self-expression will be taken to its logical—and, probably more often than not, wildly illogical—extreme. The internet has already irrevocably altered the way we buy our clothes, and social media has changed the way we wear our clothes, but the advent of Web3 is about to radically shift how we think about fashion, period. In the near future, dressing yourself won’t merely be about throwing on a shirt and pants and heading out the door. It’ll be about choosing the very form—human, animal, object, or other-—you want to represent you at any given moment, and then adorning that avatar in gear dreamed up by designers freed from the limitations of the corporeal world.

A new wave of upstart tech companies is working to shape the future of personal style in the metaverse, and it’s joined by a growing number of labels from the fashion establishment that are diving into the space headfirst. Gucci launched a collaboration with the gaming platform Roblox in spring 2021, debuted a collection of NFTs in February, and purchased a plot of virtual land on The Sandbox—an Ethereum-based digital world—later that same month. Dolce & Gabbana netted a whopping 1,885.719 ETH (over $5.5 million at current exchange rates) with its Collezione Genesi NFTs last September and headlined the first-ever Metaverse Fashion Week on the Decentraland virtual world platform in March. In December, Balenciaga rolled out a new division dedicated to developing products and experiences for the metaverse, an effort that CEO Cédric Charbit predicts will take the house “to the next level.” Louis Vuitton, Burberry, Adidas, and Ralph Lauren have all dropped metaverse projects of their own in recent months. And, arguably most notable of all, Nike announced its acquisition of RTFKT in December by placing the NFT sneaker company’s logo alongside those of its iconic main brands: Nike, Jordan, Converse.

“I got chills when I saw that [Nike] press release,” says Brian Trunzo, the metaverse lead for the blockchain--technology company Polygon Studios, which recently announced a partnership with the Council of Fashion Designers of America to help usher fashion labels into the Web3 landscape. “You forget that not even LeBron is treated as a full subsidiary brand within Nike, so in a subtle way they were saying RTFKT is bigger than LeBron. It validated the space.”

All of those efforts are proof that digital fashion is here to stay, with the industry at large fully mobilized and invested in it. But in order for the “digital apparel market to dwarf the physical apparel market,” which Trunzo predicts will happen “within the next decade or two,” a few not-so-trivial roadblocks need to be navigated. The first and biggest hurdle is making the public at large understand what digital fashion even is, and why it even needs to care.

The bottom line is that many of us are already living most of our lives in the metaverse. “These days, I could argue that our lives in the physical world are our secondary lives,” says Bobby Kim, the cofounder of L.A. streetwear stalwart The Hundreds. In 2021, Kim launched an extremely popular NFT offshoot, Adam Bomb Squad, which clocked $8 million of sales in its first week and lets owners shop exclusive physical and digital clothing drops. “Our primary lives largely exist online.” If that’s the case, Kim contends, then the way we portray ourselves online should matter just as much—if not more—than the clothes we choose to wear on our physical bodies. “At its core, fashion is a means of self-expression and identity,” Kim says. “I think we’re at an inflection point in history where we’re going to redefine what fashion means. Now, there is no body.”

In the metaverse, you can theoretically take on any shape or form you wish. You can be shapeless, translucent, invisible. To get a little kooky and metaphysical, it means that fashion will soon evolve past a mere outward expression of our inner selves and instead become a truer manifestation of, as Kim puts it, “what your soul is.”

“Some people might identify as a blue square,” Kim says. “Some people might identify as a telephone pole. And that sounds really crazy and silly, and it might offend a lot of people, but just think about what that means. It’s not that these people actually think that they’re a telephone pole in the physical world. But for whatever reason, as art, that’s how they would like to express themselves, because it says something about them.” In other words: The form you choose to take in the metaverse serves the same purpose as the clothes you wear in the real world—the avatar itself is fashion.

The main thing standing in the way of that abstract vision of infinite possibilities? The technology hasn’t quite caught up with our boundless imaginations just yet. The processing capabilities on the average laptop or smartphone just aren’t up to snuff if we’re going to experience the seamless, high-definition visual expression most futurists are envisioning—some of the biggest platforms, like The Sandbox and Decentraland, remain stuck with blocky graphics that look straight out of an ’80s sci-fi movie in order to help them run smoothly across wide audiences. And at present, for all the hype and investment, the metaverse remains a difficult thing for most people to engage with. It’s currently a loose assembly of arenas—centralized gaming platforms, decentralized open worlds, the blockchain, social media—all competing for your money and attention, like a dizzying Moroccan bazaar.

That’s where innovators like Charli Cohen come into play. Cohen, a 32-year-old British fashion designer, has been at the forefront of the digital fashion revolution for close to a decade. She began experimenting with augmented reality alongside her physical fashion line as a means of engaging with a wider global audience, before eventually collaborating with games like Assassin’s Creed and helping to usher traditional fashion companies like Selfridges into Web3. Now, she’s looking to streamline the digital fashion experience through RSTLSS, her brand-new Paris Hilton–backed platform that aims to bust through the virtual walls currently stifling creators and consumers alike.

“We were doing more and more collaborations where we were placing products in multiple game and social environments,” Cohen says. “It was just a very convoluted process, very tricky with licensing, and not a great experience for the customers.” RSTLSS aims to eliminate all of that clunkiness, allowing users to customize wearables (i.e., digital clothing for their avatars), mint them as NFTs, and then take them into a whole range of metaverse locations—video games, open worlds, social media avatars—as well as buy a physical version to wear IRL. If you want, hypothetically, a new Billie Eilish hoodie, you can make a single purchase on RSTLSS and then wear that hoodie on Fortnite, in Decentraland, on Twitter, and to school.

As far as Cohen is concerned, all this will seem second nature to the vast majority of us before we even realize it. “Think about it this way: We’re having this conversation on Zoom,” she points out. “Nobody was having conversations on Zoom until 2020. Or with Web 2.0 social media, you had your early adopters and then suddenly it just became normal for everyone without their even really thinking about it. And in the same way social media is heavily tied to identity—you’re choosing a profile picture, you’re curating your Instagram grid—dressing yourself in digital clothing will become second nature, something you’re constantly doing.”

If and when that widespread adoption actually occurs, the nature of fashion—of identity —will be wholly upset in a way we haven’t seen in centuries. We’re living in an age where our nostalgia cycles have accelerated and amplified to the point that Y2K fashion is hotter now than it was 20 years ago—revisiting 2010s trends inevitably feels just around the bend. Maybe, for all the risks and controversies inherent in Web3 in its current incarnation, the metaverse holds the key for finally pushing fashion forward into its next evolution.

No one knows for sure exactly what that next phase looks like, but it doesn’t seem like the idea of brands is in danger of going anywhere: They remain an important element of identity and expression, and names like Gucci and Nike continue to hold plenty of cultural cachet in the physical and digital realms alike. If anything, the metaverse will simply give you new avenues to engage with the brands you already love—and the new ones that’ll emerge as the tides continue to change.

To that end, while some experts believe you’ll someday be spending more on digital fashion, it’ll likely never fully replace your real-life clothing. Instead, we’ll eventually reach a weirder, more fascinating space altogether, where rather than our metaverse garments taking cues from their physical counterparts—owning a digital copy of Balenciaga trousers that premiered on the runway, say—the opposite begins to happen. What will it look like when the clothes you put on your web-footed, wing-armed, seven-eyed avatar start to influence the clothes you wear to the office? How will designers translate the freedom of identity and expression we’ve all been granted online for the times we choose to unplug and interact in person?

Fashion—for all of its perceived frivolities—is only going to grow more essential, more bizarre, more expressive, more artful, more powerful as we step deeper and deeper into our crypto-fueled future.

Yang-Yi Goh is GQ’ s style editor.

A version of this story originally appeared in the June/July 2022 issue with the title “The Wild Arrival of Web3 Fashion”

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Fashion’s digital transformation: Now or never

The COVID-19 pandemic is simultaneously an unprecedented health crisis and a global economic shock. Amid the pandemic, the apparel, fashion, and luxury (AF&L) industry has moved quickly to address urgent public-health needs—closing stores, manufacturing much-needed items such as face masks and hand sanitizer, and making donations to healthcare and community organizations. At the same time, AF&L companies are grappling with COVID-19’s business ramifications, including widespread job losses in an industry that provides livelihoods  for millions of people worldwide.

Although no one in the industry foresaw the intensity of this crisis, some fashion companies are finding that they are better equipped than others—largely because of their digital know-how. In this article, we touch on COVID-19’s impact on the AF&L industry  to date. We then propose a set of actions that AF&L companies can take to build their digital and analytics capabilities—not just to ensure business continuity and minimize the downside of COVID-19, but also to emerge from the crisis in a position of strength.

A deepening digital divide

Our consumer-sentiment surveys , conducted in April, show declines in purchase intent of 70 to 80 percent in offline and 30 to 40 percent in online in Europe and North America, even in countries that haven’t been under full lockdown. E-commerce is clearly not offsetting the sales declines in stores. Nevertheless, it has been a lifeline for fashion brands as stores have been shuttered—and it will continue to be critical during and after the recovery period. In China, the return of offline traffic has been gradual, with 74 percent of Chinese consumers saying they avoided shopping malls in the two weeks after stores reopened. 1 McKinsey Chinese COVID-19 consumer-sentiment survey with field work March 21–23, 2020. This suggests that some percentage of offline sales could permanently migrate to e-commerce.

Digital is not only an increasingly important sales channel; it can also help companies adapt cost structures and make each step of the value chain better, faster, and cheaper. For example, digitization can enable new logistics and sales-fulfillment options (such as click-and-collect and drive-through), fuel innovative ways of customer acquisition, and help predict and manage inventory to create a more resilient supply chain. The fundamental enabler to all this will be data—the transparency, governance, and accuracy of which have never been more important.

This all portends a deepening digital divide. Even before the crisis, companies that were digitally and analytically mature outperformed competitors that hadn’t built robust digital and analytics capabilities (Exhibit 1). The COVID-19 crisis has only widened the gap between industry leaders and laggards. For leaders with the ability and willingness to invest, the pandemic has clearly been an accelerator. As a top executive of a leading apparel player recently declared, “We’ve accomplished two years of digital transformation in two months.”

Thus, for executives in the AF&L sector and all related subsectors (such as beauty products and sporting goods), the imperative is clear: make digital and analytics a core element of your company’s strategy.

A number of trends in the post-COVID-19 world—the “ next normal ”—could make digital and analytics play an even more important role. Physical distancing could continue, making consumers less likely to visit brick-and-mortar stores, and a contact-free economy could emerge—raising e-commerce and automation to a new level.

The implications of these trends will differ for each company, depending on its digital starting point and strategic orientation. Digital and analytics leaders (companies in which online sales account for 30 to 40 percent of total sales, parts of the value chain are significantly digitized, and online and offline channels are integrated to some degree) have an advantage today but could quickly lose it if other players accelerate their transformation. On the other hand, laggards (companies with less than 20 percent of total sales coming from the online channel, low digitization levels across the value chain, and siloed online and offline operating models) have an opportunity to make an “all in” bet on digital and analytics—and perhaps gain market share with smaller capital-expenditure investments, which used to be a limiting factor for many brands.

That said, digitization won’t be a panacea. Companies should direct investments to areas in which the highest business value lies—which might not be in sales but rather elsewhere in the value chain. Equally important, companies should avoid “gold plating,” aiming instead for the fastest minimum viable digital solution that will achieve the business goal. Finally, the sequencing of initiatives will play a big role in making a company’s digital transformation as self-funding as possible.

Navigate the now: Immediate priorities

The health and safety of employees and customers, of course, has been—and remains—the absolute priority. By now, AF&L companies have closed stores, introduced new hygiene and safety processes in warehouses and distribution centers, and set up digital tools for remote working and collaboration. Although the situation remains uncertain and is evolving daily, there is a clear set of actions involving digital and analytics that AF&L players should implement now to keep the business going, stem sales losses, and plan the comeback .

Engage with customers in an authentic way

Email, social media, and other digital channels have seen significant spikes in usage during the crisis (Exhibit 2). AF&L brands must therefore continue to communicate frequently with consumers , even if most consumers aren’t currently spending. Use digital channels to launch genuine, purpose-driven communications regarding health, safety, business continuity, and community building. If you decide to send consumers relevant content, be sure to do so in an appropriate and empathetic tone (for example, a global sports-apparel player now offers yoga lessons on Instagram).

Whether it’s a personalized offer or outreach from a personal stylist, the best brands are maintaining customer relationships even while stores are closed. Staying in touch with your most loyal customers doesn’t just keep your brand on top of mind but also helps to boost sales. On a leading Chinese e-commerce platform, transaction volume for fashion-brand miniprograms (brand-powered apps embedded within the platform’s interface) more than doubled between January 2020 and February 2020, during the peak of China’s outbreak.

Refine and scale up your online operation

We expect the online share of fashion and apparel in Europe and North America  to increase by 20 to 40 percent during the next 6 to 12 months. In April, traffic to the top 100 fashion brands’ owned websites rose by 45 percent in Europe. 2 Similarweb, April 19, 2020, similarweb.com. Some of the larger players have even reduced their promotion intensity to be able to handle the volume of orders.

Delivering an excellent customer experience online is crucial, so reallocate your resources and shift management attention from offline to online. Also, scale up capabilities in both demand generation and fulfillment (Exhibit 3). Seek to eliminate points of friction in every part of the online customer journey—for example, by improving your website’s search function and expanding your online assortment. Some retailers have redeployed store personnel from closed stores to support online fulfillment or to assist consumers via digital call centers.

While most AF&L players already have an e-commerce presence, some still don’t. Companies without one can launch a basic online platform in 10 to 15 weeks . A private-equity-backed retailer did it in 13 weeks (Exhibit 4).

Prioritize digital-marketing levers as demand rebounds

In anticipation of a shift toward online sales, allocate more of your marketing budget to digital channels. Establish or improve your digital-marketing “war room” and increase its visibility in the organization—for instance, by establishing a C-level digital-performance dashboard that provides a cross-channel view of e-commerce, customer relationship management, and social media, thus enabling rapid identification of opportunities for efficiency optimization or growth.

Retrain your look-alike models to capture value from the new consumer segments and behaviors that have emerged during the crisis. Upgrade your digital-marketing activity to be best-in-class—for example, by adding sophisticated imagery to your social-media posts and conducting “social listening” to inform the development of new services and offers.

Use granular data and advanced analytical tools to manage stock

The value of excess inventory from spring/summer 2020 collections is estimated at €140 billion to €160 billion worldwide (between €45 billion and €60 billion in Europe alone)—more than double the normal levels for the sector. Clearing this excess stock, both to ensure liquidity and to make room for new collections, will become a top priority.

At the best-performing companies, an “inventory war room” uses big data and advanced analytics to first simulate dynamic demand scenarios specific to locations (channel, country, store) and SKUs, then to synthesize the resulting inventory risk—thus enhancing decision making. The war room decides, for example, whether to redistribute SKUs, transfer inventory to future seasons, or accelerate markdowns (Exhibit 5). A company’s investments in developing advanced analytical tools to steer markdowns during the crisis will pay off almost immediately.

Optimize costs using a zero-based approach

In light of crisis-related sales decreases, cutting costs is an obvious imperative for most companies. However, reducing all budget lines across the board is risky. We recommend a zero-based budgeting approach instead.

Identify two categories of projects: critical projects linked to core digital and analytics priorities that must proceed as planned or at a slightly lower speed (for example, building a new data lake to enable personalized marketing) and core projects that can be delayed (such as those that don’t enable emergency response). Continue only the projects that fall into those two categories; stop all others. A range of savings levers—such as vendor renegotiations and tactical moves to the cloud—can help dramatically reduce your operating costs. Reset your digital and analytics priorities and budget and adapt them to a post-coronavirus world.

Shape the next normal: Longer-term strategic actions

Although time frames remain uncertain for now, AF&L players should start planning how they’ll compete in—and perhaps even influence—the industry’s next normal. Consumer habits, companies’ interactions with consumers, and the number and types of touchpoints will all change. The requirements for supply-chain speed and flexibility will continue to increase. Digital and analytics will play a critical role in helping companies emerge stronger from the crisis.

Set an ambitious aspiration and define a clear road map

A digital and analytics transformation is typically an 18- to 24-month journey, requiring an ambitious aspiration, a clear plan, and concrete milestones. In our experience, successful digital and analytics transformations have the following elements in common:

• Strong support (or even direct sponsorship) from the CEO during the entire journey.
• A pragmatic approach that starts with an understanding of the consumer and the drivers of value creation; digital for digital’s sake will not deliver results.
• A clear road map and prioritization of initiatives, combining actions that help set up the enablers for the organization with the implementation of use cases that generate quick wins.
• A focus on getting to a minimum viable product (MVP) within two to three months—a rapid timeline that allows the company to iterate while generating value, avoiding large up-front investments.
• A central team to monitor value capture. This team also helps build the road map by scanning opportunities, allocating budgets, and coordinating implementation, ensuring that all efforts are focused on delivering tangible impact rather than gold plating.
• Well-defined key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure success.

The first step in the transformation program should be the definition of digital priorities, which will differ based on each company’s business model and digital starting point. Digitization is much more than just selling online; a quick diagnostic may be required to select and align on key value areas.

Typically, digital and analytics priorities can be categorized according to their place in the value chain: customer experience (front), distribution and supply chain (middle), and product development and support functions (back). Exhibit 6 shows high-impact use cases in each of these three areas.

Provide an excellent omnichannel experience

The pandemic has elevated digital channels as a must-have for AF&L players. Therefore, take this opportunity to leapfrog into the digital arena by making it the center of your operating model: move your traffic- and engagement-generation engine to digital, and leverage digital channels to drive store traffic and vice versa.

Besides scaling up digital sales efforts, reconfigure your store footprint accordingly—for example, by reducing presence in “B” areas (markets with lower population density and lower profitability per square meter), devoting less store space to product categories with high online penetration, experimenting with innovative formats (such as drive-through windows or pop-up stores), and making it easy for customers to perform any omnichannel operation, including complex ones (such as buying online from a store if the product isn’t in stock there, and then picking it up from another physical store in the next 12 hours). Use data and analytics to tailor the assortment in each store and to streamline and optimize assortments overall.

In our experience, fully integrated management of stock in stores and warehouses is core to any omnichannel operation. Making all stock (even stock shortly arriving to warehouses) visible to customers in any channel has proved to boost sales.

Bet on personalization

Personalization has helped several industry players achieve 20 to 30 percent increases in customer lifetime value across high-priority customer segments. It has proved even more valuable in subsectors with more stable and predictable purchasing patterns, such as beauty products.

Use cases for personalization have mostly centered on personalized offers, personalized promotions and benefits (such as access to new products), and reductions in generic traffic-generation costs. To go further, add personalization capabilities to your digital war room—for example, by collecting and analyzing all the available data to generate detailed insights about your customers. Build actionable microclusters based on customer behavior. For instance, entice the highest spenders with special incentives (such as triple loyalty points for purchases of at least $1,000), target customers who tend to buy in the categories where you have the largest inventory buildup, and give online customers coupons to redeem in-store once physical stores reopen.

Prioritize use cases based on your business context, advanced-analytics capabilities, and customer segments. Create a prioritized use-case road map and a technology-investment plan. Integrate personalization into all delivery channels to ensure consistency in your customer communications.

Leverage big data and analytics to manage the supply chain

Digital and analytics can not only drive top-line growth but also significantly improve speed, cost, flexibility, and sustainability across the supply chain. For instance, some leading companies are using radio-frequency identification (RFID) to track products more precisely and reduce in-store merchandising manipulation. Companies’ RFID investments typically yield operations simplifications and service-level improvements.

In addition, automating logistics through digital warehouse design and predictive exception management can significantly increase efficiency. The benefits will flow to consumers as well—in the form of better product availability and faster, cheaper, and more accurate deliveries. Leading online players, for example, are using models powered by artificial intelligence (AI) to predict sales of specific products in certain neighborhoods and cities, then stocking the predicted amount of inventory in nearby warehouses.

Digitize product development and support functions

During the COVID-19 crisis, the digitization of product development has proved to be a competitive advantage. Companies that were already using cutting-edge tools such as 3-D product design, virtual sampling, digital material libraries, and AI-supported planning have fared better than their peers during the crisis. Their designers and merchandisers can react faster to market trends, significantly reduce both sample costs and time-to-market, and collaborate remotely across teams. The past several weeks have shown that it’s possible to do much more on this front than some in the industry initially thought. Indeed, the pandemic may have shattered historical preconceptions and biases against digitization in core product-development processes.

Digitization of support functions is another key lever for improving efficiency. By automating repetitive tasks in back-office functions such as indirect purchasing, finance, legal, and HR, you can simultaneously reduce costs and free up time and resources to reinvest in more valuable activities. Companies that have automated their finance processes—such as claims collection and financial reconciliation—have found that they’ve also increased the agility and accuracy of these processes while capturing significant synergies. Speed up the digitization of all support functions through robotic process automation and other leading-edge technologies.

Build data and tech enablers to support your transformation

Technical enablers play a key role in powering digital and analytics growth. In our experience, three core principles are the most relevant:

• Use cloud infrastructures to sustain scaling and to access best-in-class services, particularly for use cases that best benefit from the cloud’s features (for instance, data consumption across the globe, very high storage and processing needs).
• Think data from the start. Build solid data foundations as part of every digital and analytics initiative in a way that allows rapid scaling and forward compatibility. Design and build out pragmatic data governance focused on enabling business value by helping to ensure data breadth, depth, and quality. Establish a strong data culture and ethics.
• Design your technology stack for faster integration and development, with applications broken down into microservices and isolated through the use of application programming interfaces; use unified DevOps toolchains to enable automation and reduce time-to-market to a matter of hours instead of weeks.

These enablers shouldn’t become causes for delay. Rather, they should follow the same agile timelines and sprints as the core initiatives. Implementation should be pragmatic and clearly linked to value generation.

Attract and retain top digital talent

After the crisis, financially stable companies may be able to attract top-notch digital talent, including in-demand profiles such as digital-marketing specialists, data scientists, data engineers, user-experience and user-interface designers, and software and data architects. Retaining these kinds of employees will require AF&L companies to develop new talent processes—with tailored initiatives in recruiting, career growth, learning and development, and performance management—specifically for engineering and digital talent, similar to what many fashion players already do for designers and creative directors.

In addition, AF&L players should adopt agile ways of working  to speed up development of digital and analytics products and projects. Agile techniques enable companies to release MVPs into the marketplace quickly and refine them iteratively based on consumer feedback.

There’s no denying that the COVID-19 pandemic will make for a difficult 2020. For some AF&L companies, even survival may be a struggle. However, if they lead with empathy and undertake bold actions in digital and analytics—particularly around e-commerce, data-driven stock management, and digitization of key functions—we believe they can not only endure the crisis but also build competitive advantage and strengthen their business for an omnichannel, digital-centered next normal.

Antonio Gonzalo is a partner in McKinsey’s Frankfurt office, Holger Harreis is a senior partner in the Düsseldorf office, Carlos Sanchez Altable is an associate partner in the Madrid office, and Cyrielle Villepelet is an associate partner in the Paris office.

The authors wish to thank Achim Berg, Stéphane Bout, Martine Drageset, Aimee Kim, Althea Peng, Brian Ruwadi, Jennifer Schmidt, Ewa Sikora, Kate Smaje, and Tobias Wachinger for their contributions to this article.

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