THE VR RUNWAY + A FUTURE FOR FASHION: a 2 am essay thread

for a long time i've been a big proponent of utilizing technology in the fashion industry - speaking as someone from a stem/tech background, tech has grown at a rate that fashion just Has Not kept up with.

there exists the technology to create a completely new way of translating fashion... the fact that the fashion world has been so terribly slow in adopting it is a shame and something that desperately needs to be changed. the industry cannot get lost in this new world.

i think that the familiarity of old habits has blinded us from the possibility of change, and of the adoption of new ideas. it's far less risky to stick with something that you know works - why would you alter a business model that's running smoothly already?

covid-19 has forced us all into a corner; as we've all come to realize with brutal honesty, the current way of the fashion industry is heavily reliant upon face-to-face communication and in-person work. much of that stems simply from the nature of the work being done.

but much of that can also change. not to toot my own horn here but the @HFMetGala team and i created a fully virtual event, transposing the academic nature of fashion into a purely digital realm. we re-tailored the essence of the Met Gala and translated that for the Twittersphere

there's no reason that runways cannot be translated to operate in a purely digital realm in a similar way the team and i did the Met Gala. however, you cannot simply take a runway and slap it online. i mean you can but im not guaranteeing that the spaghetti will stick to the wall

what i'm proposing is a full re-evaluation of the fashion show. ground up, clean-slate, starting from square one type of re-evaluation.

and for that we need to go back to what fashion is selling...

we need a new way to sell the dream.

if you've ventured even a little into the world of gaming you might be familiar with a little thing called oculus rift - for the uninitiated you basically strap an screen about 5 inches away from your eyes. it's 2 am, we dont need to get into semantics, you get the point

what oculus rift did was revolutionize the gaming world. suddenly, people who had only ever played on a screen in front of them were transported into a fully virtual world. you get to walk around IN the game - everything feels so much more real. you buy in further to the fantasy.

there is no reason that the fantasy of walking around in your favorite game can't be applied to fashion. in essence, aren't we all chasing the same thing? to be a part of an unattainable world where everything feels just a little bit more magical?

fashion advertising has done this beautifully for decades - pick your favorite fashion house and look at the campaigns. each has such a defining vision, creating exclusive worlds for models to inhabit in.

in terms of runways selling a similar dream, just look at the spectacle that is the seasonal chanel set. the chanel team is basically known at this point for turning the grand palais into a strange new world - be it shopping center, winter wonderland, or rocket launchpad

designers so often have a fully fledged world in which their collections spring to life - we've seen something related to this via fashion films. film is a medium that allows for full control of a visual message and something that really paints a complete visual experience

if the fashion show is forced online, what [creatively speaking] is stopping us from blending the runways and the film medium together to create something greater? and since the tech exists, what's stopping us from putting the customer directly into that world via vr?

[ disclaimer: i'm not considering costs within this thread because 1. it's 2 am and i dont want to pull numbers off google rn im tired ok and 2. it's much more fun to just think creatively as much as an idea might not financially work ]

imagine being able to pop on an oculus style headset and being transported into a vr dreamscape with models wearing the newest collection in a world that reflects that full creative vision. imagine how cool and exciting it would seem and how exclusive you would feel

it hits that balance between things feeling personally exclusive while being democratized enough that you can chat about it with a few thousand of your favorite friends on social media - you can experience it alone, but share the feeling with everyone

in moving things online, some ways will simply work better than others because of the nature of the technology that one is working with. the challenge now is figuring out how to leverage the technology to full develop a vision.

and for some reason i can't stop thinking about the sheer potential of the vr fashion show

that's all the thoughts for tonight everyone, hopefully it made sense - special thanks to engineering school for teaching me how to pick my tools to fit the problem and that idea setting off this entire spiel oops

anyways lets hear discourse, it's no fun just yelling into a void