Discussions about the fashion industry thread

[blacklight]

I thought it was crazy until I realized most people (ok, many) people on this site buy clothes purely for the purposes of posting them online. So it ends up being a digital good anyway, even if it has a physical form.

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I think it was Jeff Staple who had a well written post on this w/r/t sneaker culture:

• most sneakerheads' engagement with any given limited release shoe is purely digital (e.g. online hype, SNKRS/Confirmed, forums, IG)
• people who score those releases tend to either immediately resell them to collectors or hold onto them as assets --> they don't actually "exist" in the street
• despite them existing almost entirely as digital goods the idea of these shoes yield tremendous sway on marketing and the trajectory of subsequent releases

 

[FlyingMonkey]

I haven't, but I was talking to JefferyD about it over the phone a few weeks ago. He told me about these digital technologies, the NFT dress, and the possibility of people creating online avatars and dressing them in exclusive fashions. This was before the Metaverse thing was even announced. As we were talking about this, I was thinking, "wait ... people on StyleForum already do this." People are basically creating online personas, buying clothes, and then uploading photos for likes. Some of the outfits are totally impractical and disconnected from their daily life, but it's enjoyable because they're immersed in this community.

Similarly, if you think of the loads and loads of YouTube sneaker channels, where people are buying sneakers to do "reviews." I mean, the review is barely even a review. It's just a description of how the sneaker looks stretched out over five minutes. So the person is basically buying a prop for a video. I assume many of these sneakers never even get worn.

Anyway, in light of that, the NFT dress didn't seem so crazy.

I agree with the general observation that the existence of entirely online fashion isn't as totally new as it might appear. But Baudrillard was way ahead of us on that one (as were many other scholars - people like Sadie Plant back in the 1990s for example), oh, and ******* Second Life, which now seems like prophetic all over again, having gone through several cycles of cyberfuturism, unfashionable graphical nightmare and back, already did virtual body-modification, virtual clothes, virtual real estate etc. etc. years ago). For that matter so did every MMO/RPG ever. Do we not remember all those stories of the 'theft' of magic swords supposedly worth thousands of real dollars in World of Warcraft?

From the other end, it is possible to overdo this thesis somewhat, and indeed I think you are exaggerating just a little, as fashion writers are wont to do. I doubt there are that many people on SF who buy and dress for SF. And the ones that do are generally very obvious. There is a very small subculture of male style influencers (some of whom you also promote here). But many of us just like clothes and occasionally post a picture for amusement. And many more, in fact probably the vast majority of SF members, never post a picture and certainly aren't buying to be seen online. It would be possible to test this with a small, well-designed research project...

 

[heebalabala]

I thought it was crazy until I realized most people (ok, many) people on this site buy clothes purely for the purposes of posting them online.

Whaaaaaaaa??? Very controversial nugget you casually dropped here. Or maybe I'm just naive. Definitely will be eyeballing the WAYWTs a bit more closely now.

 

[tgaith77]

I'm sure there's a number of people here who do that, although I'm not sure any have said as much.

 

[mak1277]

Whaaaaaaaa??? Very controversial nugget you casually dropped here. Or maybe I'm just naive. Definitely will be eyeballing the WAYWTs a bit more closely now.

The question I have is whether those people are doing it for themselves (for likes) or if they're compensated to do so...?

 

[BlakeRVA]

This is tangential, but I’ve always found the desire to be a fashion influencer strange. It usually seems rooted in the desire to have greater access to the clothes you want. But, you need to buy a LOT of clothes along the way and unless you hit massive success (100K+ followers) you’ll only receive free clothes from unknown, less desirable brands. It seems like a self-defeating game, but perhaps I’m under estimating the sense of validation people feel in their minor celebrity.

 

[gdl203]

This is tangential, but I’ve always found the desire to be a fashion influencer strange. It usually seems rooted in the desire to have greater access to the clothes you want. But, you need to buy a LOT of clothes along the way and unless you hit massive success (100K+ followers) you’ll only receive free clothes from unknown, less desirable brands. It seems like a self-defeating game, but perhaps I’m under estimating the sense of validation people feel in their minor celebrity.

I think you may be underestimating it. I don't think it's so much the celebrity aspect but more the feeling of being loved. Having dozens and hundreds of people everyday telling you how great you look, is a massive ego boost. I'm sure it's also addictive to a certain extent.

 

[zissou]

I thought it was crazy until I realized most people (ok, many) people on this site buy clothes purely for the purposes of posting them online. So it ends up being a digital good anyway, even if it has a physical form.

The other thing you mentioned ties into the discussion we had earlier: how much of this process is going to get affected by digital information technologies. JefferyD is working on a project to create custom patterns from scratch using algorithms, which will effectively apply AI technology to pattern drafting if he's successful.

Then there's the stuff you're talking about: potentially doing all the fittings remotely using avatars. It would revolutionize custom tailoring (and garment production).

Have you also seen this? The digital rendering of fabrics is totally amazing at this point

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Those are outstanding renderings, indeed. The quality from CLO3D is as good if not better. Another student in my apparel design class got going in CLO last year, and his work just blows everyone else's out of the water. He also prototypes his designs much faster than everyone else.

The quality of renderings is so good at this point that some smaller brands are presenting their seasonal lines digitally with no physical products made until they are ordered by retailers. The potential for increased efficiency and sustainability through digital apparel design is enormous!

Custom patterns from algorithms isn't necessarily new (we pattern by hand through plugging a wearer's body measurements into a series of mathematical formulas), but it would be awfully handy to just drop the measurements into a program that then generates an entire line of MTM apparel.

We have been integrating CLO3D into our sample design for the 8 months or so.

We need customers to get on board (and they are on the way). In the longrun, if it works out and ends up being a good tool, it stands to save us 10's of thousands of dollars in shipping samples overnight via Fedex (literally everyday) transcon and across the Pacific.

The CLO people are pretty easy to work with too.

Even if customers never get on board, it's still a huge benefit to the industry for the reasons you mention.

I haven't, but I was talking to JefferyD about it over the phone a few weeks ago. He told me about these digital technologies, the NFT dress, and the possibility of people creating online avatars and dressing them in exclusive fashions. This was before the Metaverse thing was even announced. As we were talking about this, I was thinking, "wait ... people on StyleForum already do this." People are basically creating online personas, buying clothes, and then uploading photos for likes. Some of the outfits are totally impractical and disconnected from their daily life, but it's enjoyable because they're immersed in this community.

This is an interesting idea. I know that I've gotten caught up in this in the past, likely because I was all of a sudden exposed to so many amazing brands that I had never heard of. Now, I find myself offloading a substantial portion of my wardrobe in favor of fewer better clothes. There's only so far that I'm willing to go into the digital world. I've given up entirely on Facebook and use Instagram via a browser app for that lo-fi experience.

Speaking of which, I need to get back to drafting a paper pattern for a MTM tweed anorak for myself (0).

 

[Fuuma]

Are we really saying buying digital clothes isn't stupid because some people are already being stupid in a similar way? Wow.

 

[London]

There is a market for it, and when the corporations are gearing up, you know it will expand. The thing that I find funny is that so many brands don't even do e-commerce great, and they're skipping steps trying to get into the so-called metaverse before they even do the basics right. We've come a long ways since the dot.com bubble, and maybe we had to go through that to get to where we currently are.

A lot of this smells the same. They will be people who figure it out, but a lot of companies will lose their digital shirts trying to jump on the hype train.

 

[clee1982]

Kind just different market though

 

[gardenvariety]

I thought it was crazy until I realized most people (ok, many) people on this site buy clothes purely for the purposes of posting them online. So it ends up being a digital good anyway, even if it has a physical form.

I haven't, but I was talking to JefferyD about it over the phone a few weeks ago. He told me about these digital technologies, the NFT dress, and the possibility of people creating online avatars and dressing them in exclusive fashions. This was before the Metaverse thing was even announced. As we were talking about this, I was thinking, "wait ... people on StyleForum already do this." People are basically creating online personas, buying clothes, and then uploading photos for likes. Some of the outfits are totally impractical and disconnected from their daily life, but it's enjoyable because they're immersed in this community.

Similarly, if you think of the loads and loads of YouTube sneaker channels, where people are buying sneakers to do "reviews." I mean, the review is barely even a review. It's just a description of how the sneaker looks stretched out over five minutes. So the person is basically buying a prop for a video. I assume many of these sneakers never even get worn.

Anyway, in light of that, the NFT dress didn't seem so crazy.

This is definitely an article-worthy topic; it's really interesting and would love to see it fleshed out further. You mentioned the WAYWT threads as an example; an even more purely distilled form is the 'Recent Purchases' thread, where people repost flat product shots they've ganked from webstores. It's only if someone in the thread has lived experience with the products in the photos that the discussion takes on any depth of experience; otherwise we're just sitting around commenting on a bunch of pixels arranged into the shape of some pants.

For the record, I do think that SF posters are mostly people who are just enthusiastic about clothes, and want to share that enthusiasm with others who feel the same way.

I also feel like this topic goes wayyyy beyond the little niche of mens' clothing discussed here, and well-suited to broader social media discussions, and how an online persona on social media is just a kind of evolutionary step towards a fully digital existence.

All this overlaps with what I'd call 'gear culture,' where people are more focused on a hobby's gear and talking about it, than actually using the gear (see: photography forums where people post mediocre pictures but always make sure to put the camera and type of film they're using front and center -- not too different from how SF-approved brands may be proudly displayed in order to get them likes for otherwise pretty normal looking outfits).

'Gear culture' in this sense seems critically different than that Get the Gear Portlandia bit. The sketch might be about how we buy way too much unneeded junk to fit an aspirational lifestyle, but in contrast, 'gear culture' is less about the uses fulfilled by specific products, and more about using those products as a proxy to form connection with others---through little other than talking about things. I think that as people spend less and less time in physical communities, photos of consumer objects (and photos of lifestyles) have formed one of the digital hearths that we gather around.

 

[ValidusLA]

Even if customers never get on board, it's still a huge benefit to the industry for the reasons you mention.

Not in our case. As a white label firm, if our customers want physical samples, they get physical samples.

Right now even with a 91% Fedex overnight discount, our monthly Fedex bill is still $20k average.

Would be great to lop off that type of spending (and negative environmental impact).

 

[FlyingMonkey]

Are we really saying buying digital clothes isn't stupid because some people are already being stupid in a similar way? Wow.

True, but... if many people are going to be spending their the majority of their waking life in some kind of verse or virt, why wouldn't you buy clothes that perform a similar function to the clothes we wear in the real world now, and just wear pajamas of T-shirt and boxer shorts in real life? It's not the world I want*, but it seems to be the world a lot of people are enthusiastic about.

However, what I don't understand is why you would be so boring as to wear conventional clothes or even be of conventional appearance in a virtual world. Let's face it. You can be anything. You could be a spiked orange ball, a gigantic peanut, a glowing green cat, a featureless black cube, a dragon, any human or animal that has ever lived. So why would you wear a virtual tailored suit or virtual Nike's? (and yes, I'm a sociologist, so I know why - it's a rhetorical question). As an example, I was at a conference in Second Life a decade ago. It was organised by a Law School, and I kid you not, every single avatar was made to look roughly like the person IRL and all of them wore dark suits etc., and they all sat down! I was screaming inside: "It's a virtual world, you can be whatever you want and you can fly - there's no gravity!" So I turned up as a neon-pink-skinned woman with a mohawk in a skin-tight zebra catsuit, and I spent my time hovering around the event and making anonymous saracastic comments (becuase you could do that too)... if there's going to be a virtual world, let's enjoy it, let's enjoy the lack of physical laws and restraints. If we're going to deliberately introduce real world-like norms and restrictions, including clothes (and for that matter, markets) I'd rather not bother.

*Personally I think it's going to be entirely undermined by climate breakdown and the need to reduce the growth of energy demad...

 

[dieworkwear]

So I turned up as a neon-pink-skinned woman with a mohawk in a skin-tight zebra catsuit

If I can be anything in the virtual world, I would be content ?