Digitalisation: Weaving a Path to Redesign Fashion

Adapting to new normals has always been the theme of human nature, in sync with a constant need for change. Every age has brought something new to the fashion industry, with the end of each era, there came something precious to designers and fashion brands. The digital age has brought a new meaning to fashion. Online purchases have become as essential as store sales. Fashion, along with its progressive evolution, has hit people in every part of the world at a great speed because of the digital world.

A future that seemed like science fiction a few years ago has now been technologically realised by digital assistants like Alexa or Google Home, telling us about the weather or even regulating the blinds. Amazon's Echo Look camera renders trendy suggestions and feedback through its machine learning after analysing the client's type of clothing.

The invention of Artificial Intelligence brought with itself a change to age old techniques and technologies in all spheres of the fashion industry, incorporating the use of Virtual and Augmented Reality in the sub-sectors of this massive field. Virtual reality has improved upon the structure of fashion shows to enable the audience to get a life-like experience of the environment along with the product. Enhanced realism has pushed market orientation to a new level by offering additional product knowledge through Augmented Reality in shopping. Consumers can now not only view how the products would look in reality, but also do a full ‘trial and buy’ from the convenience of their own homes.

Development of Artificial intelligence in fashion can be thought of as an asset and a threat. The perceived challenges include lack of personal touch and job protection. An attempt has been made to replace the designers with Artificial Intelligence. One such initiative was taken by Google through its project ‘MUZE’ where the user just needs to answer some questions and within seconds it would put the data together to create an outfit. Amazon, that is paving its path into one sector it is yet to crack, launched its new invention ‘StyleSnap’ which is the new Shazam for fashion that spares you the pain of finding your ideal style by 'matching the look' in the image uploaded or clicked by the user and find similar items for sale on Amazon.com. A Report by Alaia K (2020) has claimed that Artificial Intelligence cannot replace the fashion force but it will definitely act as an assistant since the creative industry will thrive in the age of Digitalisation. Therefore creativity and authenticity will be the most marketable and valued skill in the future.

There is no doubt that there are more advantages than pitfalls. With digitalisation, producers benefit from higher accuracy in terms of demand and supply, which in turn leads to significant environmental benefits, since lowered errors in market forecasts and predicted patterns will directly lower the number of clothing produced as the fashion industry stands first for being world’s largest polluter. According to Medium(2020), At the H&M group, “Amplified Intelligence” is used in order to examine the supply and demand pattern so that allocation of the sufficient number of goods to each store can be done hence reducing the number of wasted clothes. A more personalised shopping experience for the customers has been made possible due to the increasing e-commerce shopping where the websites are able to track data of their customers’ browsing patterns which helps them to suggest similar items based on their search. With the emergence of chatbots, customer service and communication has improved. With the assistance and intellect of Artificial Intelligence, designers can

simplify and eliminate the unrequired steps during the procedure of creation as earlier,

designers had access to only unstructured content along with detecting defects in the fabric;

ensuring that the final products are similar to the initially designed ones furthermore performing some quality assurance procedures. The use of Artificial Intelligence in the fashion industry of 2020 has become so well entrenched that 44% of the fashion retailers (who have not adopted AI) are today facing bankruptcy

With Fashion models being replaced, Digital models and influencers are making a huge impact on the fashion industry from every aspect. “AI technology generates completely customizable photorealistic artificial promotional fashion models at large scale, helping retail brands reduce costs, save time, and eliminate the liabilities currently associated with print advertisement.” says Artificial Talent Co. DataGrid, a Japanese tech company, uses a subset of AI that is Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) which offers the digital models multiple poses which are similar to what is done in commercial modelling. Shudu, world’s first digital ¬supermodel, has taken over Instagram with over 200k followers and featured in high-fashion campaigns for brands such as Dior, Balmain, Fenty and many more along with prominent magazines. Cameron-James Wilson, CEO of The Diigitals which is the world’s first digital modelling agency, created her using 3D design technology in addition to CLO which is a platform for creating clothes digitally. Designed for 3D garment simulation, without creating samples, the technology allows designers to produce their creative vision along with creating digital version of a brand’s collection. Miquela, Margot and Zhi are a few of the other popular computer-generated image models.

The industry’s never resting force didn’t fail to produce Creativity from crisis during the pandemic of Covid-19 through Digitalisation. It may be turning the world upside down, reaching into every aspect of our lives, but there was one part it could not alter: creativity breaking the barriers of social distancing, didn’t put a cork in their versatility. An industry built on creativity came up with its own alternative and managed to start a trend of Facetime photoshoots during this great war between man and misery. With Virtual Fashion shows, Models and Augmented Shopping, the ever-adapting trend-setting sector made people experience a ‘Virtual World of No Pandemic’ which helped them adapt to the ‘New Normal, a world without predictability.’