“YOU’LLhave ONE
GARMENT. OVER
IT, YOU’LL WEAR A
HOLOGR APHIC
LAYERof
EXPRESSION ”118 ELLE.COM/UK November 2O19
ELLEFeatureI
n a hyper modern and minimalist coworking space in Amsterdam- all polished concrete floors, capacious glass walls andlotsof
standing desks – the future of fashion is playing out. Albeit very
quietly. There is no hiss of scissors through patterns, no sewing
machines hammering away and no swoosh of plush fabric
being carried from machine to mannequin. In fact, there’s no fabric or any
mannequins at all. Which is strange, because I’m standing in a fashion
house, one that recently made a dress that sold for $9,5OO, and whose
work has been talked about among fashion circles and the tech set across
the world. Instead there is only the tap of a keyboard as a figure cloaked
in fashion’s all-black uniform amends a hem here,
a collar there, all through the click of a mouse.
This is The Fabricant, the world’s first digital-
only fashion house. You can spend thousands on
their futuristic dresses, blouses and skirts, but are
unable to wear a single piece in the real world.
‘This is the fashion house of the future,’ declares
26 -year-old creative director Amber Slooten.
Slooten is the co-founder and sole creative
of The Fabricant, launched in 2O18 with CEO
Kerry Murphy, a Finnish animator who was in the
audience at Slooten’s graduate show and was
captivated by her entirely digital portfolio, modelled by holograms.
‘I was baffled that she was the only one doing this,’ recalls Murphy. ‘And
intrigued by the possibilities in the space, since it was so unexplored.’
Three years on from Slooten’s show, The Fabricant’s work has been
gathering fans. In May, a digital-only dress they designed – the Iridescence - was auctioned. For $9,5OO.It was bought by cryptosecurity executive
Richard Ma, for his wife Mary. Mary had photographs taken in Tokyo
in July, then the dress was digitally tailored onto images of her body. But
that’s as far as it goes. In Mary’s hard drive, it will never physically exist.
She can only rewear it if she has a new shoot... and pays to have the dress
refitted to the photos. If this sounds like a hassle, and a lot of money... Well,
it kind of is. Which is why I’m in this deafeningly quiet corner of Amsterdam,
tr ying to understand whether this futuristic vision of fashion is going to fly.
Like most industries, the fashion world is desperately searching
for ways to attract younger customers. They know two key things about
them: they spend most of their time on digital platforms, they care deeply
about how they look on Instagram. They want their online personas
to stand out; which means dressing well, or differently, and which is
where digital clothing comes in.
The proof: last November, Scandinavian clothing brand Carlings
released an outlandish collection of 19 purely virtual pieces costing
between $1O and $3O. There were oversized yellow crocodile skin
coats, mirror-shiny silver tracksuit bottoms and hyperinflated puffa jackets- and they sold out almost instantly. Influencers across the world sent in
photos of themselves in different scenarios – on a bike in the Netherlands,
in a playground in Atlanta – whereupon a 3D designer digitally fitted
the clothes to their photographic bodies, sort of like virtual Barbie dolls.
These embellished photos were then posted on Instagram, to their
combined hundreds of thousands of followers. Elisa Lepistö, a Finnish
blogger, shared a picture of herself laughing on a rooftop in Helsinki,
‘wearing’ a pink sweater, emblazoned with the motto ‘I’m not a robot’.
She tells me, ‘it’s cool to discover new possibilities
to be creati ve wit h fashion, since it isn’t ecological
to consume more clothes all the time.’ When I ask
if she would part with her own money, she’s less
evangelical. ‘I don’t know...’ she trails off.
It sounds like the ideal business model – but
it’s not foolproof quite yet. According to Murphy,
Carlings’ collection would have been a massive
loss leader, such is the cost of the highly skilled
3D designers required to tailor each outfit to
individual photos: ‘[Carlings] were putting
together less than 1O pictures a day, selling
at a price point between $1O and $3O, so making a few hundred
dollars a day’ – barely enough to pay the day rate of one 3D designer.
For Slooten, however such pictures are just the beginning. Her vision
is for her clothes to be actually worn. In the future, she claims, everyone
will wear ‘a base suit’ (like a wetsuit). ‘It would regulate your temperature,
be super comfortable. You’ll have this one garment in your closet that
you wear all the time. And over that you wear a holographic layer of
expression, and you can see it with [virtual or augmented reality] lenses.’
So, everyone will be walking around in flesh-coloured scuba suits,
wearing VR headsets to see digital clothing on each other? ‘Yep,’ she
says decisively. ‘This is the future that I’m waiting for.’
nd while this sounds like it could have been plucked
from an episode of Black Mirror, Slooten isn’t alone in
her futuristic vision. ‘Within a decade, a lot more people
will be wearing AR headsets,’ says Matthew Drinkwater,
head of the London College of Fashion’s Innovation
Agency. ‘We can therefore imagine there’ll be a new garment, one which
can be augmented.’ He predicts a ‘permanent, living digital layer’, one in
which digital information and objects would constantly exist around us,
ready for us to tap into, not just with futuristic headsets, but with our existingTHE DESIGNS
The Fabricant’s
DEEP collection
(right)... None of
which you can
physically wearTHE PEOPLE
Elisa Lepistö’s
virtual sweater (left).
Mary (right) in
The Fabricant’s
Iridescence dressA