Virtual and Digital Fashion: The Next Sustainable Fashion
One of the biggest fashion evolutions of recent times is unarguably, the concept of sustainability and ethical fashion. This concept which is commonly summed up as "treating the environment, animals and your workers right" was brought about by a much needed global boom of social consciousness about our environment and climate. It was also supported by the fact that technological advancement enabled the use of other alternative materials processes and methods in the fashion industry.
As people all over the world become more aware of the unsustainable fashion choices they make, the sustainable fashion industry continues to advance in leaps and bounds. In fact, the estimated value of the sustainable fashion industry is set to reach a whopping $8.25 billion by the year 2023. Naturally, there will be several challenges the industry will face and because of this, further advancements across all sectors of the sustainable fashion industry are understandably still ongoing.
On the sustainability end, with virtual fashion, there is no issue of water consumption and practically all physical waste is eliminated. There are no unethical supply chains as the raw materials are coded in computers; no labour issues because the workers are highly skilled designers and programmers known to have generally great working conditions. Even the waste associated with fashion shows are eliminated as now, the shows can be virtual too. Does it get more environmentally friendly than that?
Virtual and digital fashion is a step forward for not only the industry, but also creatives and tech. These advancements may not completely replace regular clothing, but they provide great alternatives to some serious flaws in our traditional fashion system. What matters a lot more though, is how we build and consume these products moving forward. Otherwise, we will remain stuck in a loop of creating bigger problems for ourselves out of the solutions we created in order to solve our fashion problems.
If you found this article insightful, you might want to keep up with fashion in the metaverse here.