Earth2030: A New Reality... Journey Book by Luke Owen

A New Reality 1

Fashion is changing and the pandemic has only accelerated this, from virtual fashion shows to augmented reality showrooms. The way we view fashion has changed... Combining social media and new technology and innovatio, my trend looks at the future of fashion and technology and how this can change how we consume clothing and fashion forever.

Luke Owen 1910502 Contemporary Fashion Communication Journey Book

The Journey into the virtual world 1.0 - The advancements of technology within fashion 1.1 - How will we consume fashion in 2030? 1.2 - The uniformity of today, but creating an anti-uniformity of tomorrow 1.3 - Tim Walker and his inspiration 2.0 - The Consumer 2.1 - The Market level 3.0 - How this story is being told through my exhibition and how it supports my narrative

1.0

The Advancements of Technology within Fashion Fashion has seen an astronomical rise in technological uses in the past couple of years but none more so than in the past year spanning the pandemic. Virtual fashion weeks and showrooms are more and more common by the day and the use of virtual reality and 3d scanning has been imperative. With many brands and companies acknowledging the importance and need for innovation in the ways we consume fashion. There are many companies and brands taking the steps to do this and some of the brands I’ve looked at during this research would be: - -

Institute of Digital Fashion Clo Design

Franck Audrain 3DFD Design

I_oDF The Institute of Digital fashion have, from my research, really taken the technology and used it to the best of their capabilities and I think something I liked about their work was the message and strong narrative within all their work, working with purpose, yes creativity, but inclusivity and diversity leads a lot of what they’re doing and that’s something that I think is super important. We have so much incredible technology and can do so much with it but an overall message or narrative still needs to be told and portrayed. “Young and Cattytay join together to push tech-use toward a more democratic and sustainable future, offering a platform and manifesto to restructure how technology and digital are used from creation to consumer, building a new future for an unregulated and biased industry.” Quote taken from IoDF’s Press release page. In terms of visuals and digital work, they’ve created many models and 3d digital designs, adding virtual reality aspects as shown in some of their work called ‘Sustainable in Snow’. Which is about pushing technology towards a more sustainable future, taking innovation over tradition and rewriting the ‘rules’ of fashion whilst doing this. Through a post they talk about changing the way we consume fashion, not just visually but what we demand of fashion in terms of how we create it and the products we come out with. One of their latest projects included LFW and how technology can change and evolve the “archaic structures” that are currently in place. This project involved creating an instagram filter that unlocks a completely augmented reality based show room, which displayed 11 London-based designers work. This outcome works parallel to their ideologies about elevating and innovating fashion “IRL and URL”, furthermore, this also supports a post COVID-19 world in terms of a safe and non-contact environment. They also mention a support for British based designers in the wake of Brexit. 7

Clo Design Creating digital content is becomgin easier and easier in modern times with more access to thousands of different programmes and lessons in how to learn these programmes. Clo3D is one of these programmes that allows the next level of creatvity, a brief description given by the website is “Revolutionize your design process with true-to-life 3D garment simulation. Get faster, increase accuracy, shorten your calendar, and expand your design capability.”. 3D creation is heavily used in other industries and plenty of inspiration can be taken from film and more significantly from the video gaming industry.

When looking at the technological processes that goes into green screening films or wrapping and unwrapping models for a video game. This started an internal dialogue if you would, and I thought about how because clothing is seen as a physical need/ physical want, we don’t see how we could creatively adapt and evolve clothing on a digital level to make it in forms we’ve never seen before. This is where programs like Clo design as important because they allow a new way of consumption for the fashion industry. Like with the I_oDF, they offer creatives and designers to produce work in a way that hasn’t been done before. 8

Franck Audrain 3DFD Design

Franck Audrain is a 3D fashion designer, creating virtual fashion for sportswear, ready-to-wear, trends, events, and many more projects. But his work focuses around creating clear and realistic silhouettes and textures, focusing on a realism, oppose to creating something that’s not been seen before. This work is incredibly detailed and in terms of visuals, it offers something high quality and something that looks extremely professional and appeals to younger markets because of this optimization of technology.

1.1

How will we consume fashion in 2030 based off today?

Where do we consume fashion? What is consuming fashion? Do Generation Z’s have a short attention span and how will this affect marketing as we move forward, watching Gen Z having an ever-growing impact on the market. Social media has changed how we consume fashion forever, the fear of missing out on the latest clothing, not by season, but day by day. For example, Kylie Jenner could wear a gold reflective cocktail dress to an awards ceremony, then by the next day, we’ll see the fast fashion market have products drawn up and produced that replicate this look exactly, offering a chance for the younger generations to feel like they look like Kylie Jenner but for a fraction of a fraction of the price. This idea of consuming fashion based off quick and reactionary purchases and not necessarily by seasons is something that is very current. BUT, I do believe as we’ve gone through this global pandemic, we’ve seen a shift in purchasing, with the positive environmental impacts we’ve seen because of the lack of unsustainable processes. Sustainability is a cool trend right? WRONG. It’s going from something companies advertise because they think it’ll be a ‘good look’, to something consumers want companies to be completely transparent about, including but not limited to, how products are made, how ethically this is, the transporting of materials and products and how sustainable this is and what happens to waste. Speaking of waste, platforms like Depop and 21 Buttons are growing amongst younger generations, giving clothes a new life, being more sustainable and not throwing away clothing. For example, I have a pile of clothes sat, waiting to be sold on Depop so I can give them new home instead of throwing them in a dump or leaving them to waste away in a landfill. Looking at figure from 2019, Depop has over 13 million users and has moved approximately £350m in sales. Since these haven been taken from 2019, the company itself has grown through the pandemic especially, with peoples financial situations and people wanting to support small Depop businesses as well as each other. According to statistics, 90% of users are under the age of 26, making these users Gen Z’s. (Lunden, 2019) 10

So what do all of these aspects point towards? A more sustainable future, looking at making the most of what we have, not what we want to throw-away. But this can be utilised and adapting using technology, something that I predict to change is the way we buy constantly physically, I think technology can give us that new outfit or new outlet to fashion through augmented reality, whether this means optimizing a virtual viewing and fitting before we purchase, or being able to purchasing virtually to wear for an Instagram post via digital editing. Something that needs to be accounted for is the generations in power and who decides on what we use moving forward, with Gen Z and Alpha’s being digital natives (people who know nothing but life with technology.) meaning that the technological advances would need and I believe will exceed the expectations of those previous generations who were still adapting to life with technology.

1.2

The uniformity of today, but creating an anti-uniformity of tomorrow

Fashion is and has always been a way of self-expression, showing who we are through how we dress, be that what social tribe we belong to, or what we believe in or simply as to what our favourite colour is. On a similar vein to the way we consume fashion in 2021, this also comes with a uniformity of how we dress in terms of the item we wear and how trend based we are, micro and macro. Due to how we consume fashion and the way we absorb what influential figures are wearing, we see certain pieces and styles a lot through small stints, starting off from being on a famous celebrity then trickling down to fast fashion brands like ‘Pretty Little Thing’ and ‘Boohoo’ create simplified variants of the same thing and these create micro trends, creating a herd uniformity if you would. I think this will have changed in the coming years, with something as customisable and creative as augmented and virtual reality, the opportunities are vast.

1.3

Tim Walker and his inspiration

I had a narrative, a story I wanted to tell, but I needed a direction or some inspiration on how best to do this. After looking at multiple artists, I came across Tim Walker and his work with Louis Vuitton especially. The work being called ‘Heaven on Earth’, with the cameras, props etc they used, they wanted to create a surrealistic aesthetic to their work. Hypebeast spoke about how Virgil Abloh used this imagery to “allude to the freedom of youth” (Brain, 2020). This heavily relates to what I’m looking at, generational wise and aesthetically. One of the key takeaway points was the use of the camera angle, how this changes how we look at these images, it changes the mood of the images complete-ly without having to actually impact anything physically.

The interesting thing to note is his inspiration comes from any part of life, it can be ever-day things or media hes con-sumed, “I look at television, I read, I look at National Geographic, at newspapers, at documentary photography, at fashion photography, at cinema” (Tim Walker: ‘There’s an extremity to my interest in beauty’, 2019). This inspired me towards a more normal location and place, taking ‘normal’ photos but changing it digitally to show the journey from a more traditional ‘photoshoot’ to what we can achieve in this and the future digital eras. 15

The Consumer

2.0

Something important to take in to account is the consumer, and who this is targeted at and how this affects how we approach this trend. In ten years’ time, the generations with income would have shifted and we will see Gen Z and Gen Alphas with more control in the market and brands would cater for them more and more. This has already started, with the collaboration between The North Face and Gucci. A brand which markets for the older generations, collaborating with a brand that is more in touch with the younger audiences, identifying and relating to these brands together. The consumer would be both Gen Z and Alpha’s, appealing to their technological sides, with these generations being ‘digital natives’, this means they’ve been born in to a world with technology, meaning they’re not impressed with just your average tech anymore. It really has to innovate and create new things that pushes what people think is possible. A good example of technology never taking off properly due to lack of innovation would be 3D films, you know, the red and blue 3D glasses ones. Whilst we have normalised the use of 3d glasses in cinemas nowadays, this hasn’t really progressed and films aren’t really optimised for this anymore. This is because it’s nothing new or exciting anymore, it doesn’t cater to the needs and wants of the younger generations like I believe augmented and virtual reality can. The way we can change the world we live in, change what we’re wearing, our physical appearance, all in the blink of an eye through a virtual reality. But within these generations there are countless factors and traits that divide and individualise younger people. Some examples being political views, ethical views, favoured brands. This trend tries to merge large industries together, gaming and fashion, using and creating a new platform. In its early stages, this caters to people who are more heavily in to fashion as the trends main focus is the fashion aspect. So younger, more technological driven people will adopt this trend, creating new types of content, for personal use, or for wider use on platforms like Instagram or the new version of Tiktok, which by that time, might be a 3D augmented reality world. 16

Something to consider is accessibility, how readily available will this be in 2030? Nowadays, we can see augmented reality take place on our phone screen, on an Instagram story, like I’ve mentioned with I_oDF in chapter 1.1. So it’s available on a basic level today, I think the main change would obviously be the quality and general immersiveness of the experience. I think this content would be available to a wider audience for sure, something positive to come out of events like virtual fashion shows, is the amount of people that can attend that previously wouldn’t be able to due to the super-exclusivity of the events in general. So overall, I think this trend can and will be highly accessible, which is part of the trend itself, being able to access the amazing and innovative world of fashion. Anytime. Anywhere. 17

The Market Level

2.1

Something that completely took over during the 2010’s was streetwear, this culture created and curated by the likes of Virgil Abloh and Jerry Lorenzo with a sprinkle of Kanye West in there. But what was this culture and what does it involve… Streetwear has been around as a market for decades, with brands from the 80’s such as Fila, Adidas Nike etc, these were seen as sportswear brands but worn in a streetwear setting, then during the 90’s we saw a rise in Supreme, A Bathing Ape and Carhartt. Nowadays we see more and more luxury brands entering the area so to speak, the most popular examples being Balenciaga, Louis Vuitton and Dior. All getting involved in more streetwear styles, such as t-shirts, sneakers, and more casual accessories. Then we have high-end streetwear brands like Heron Preston, Stussy, Palace and Off-White. Combining this different brands together, you have a broad and vast landscape that paints the streetwear picture, this market level is the level I’d like to approach for multiple reasons. When researching further into market levels, I settled for this one as I believe, with the everyday usage and accessibility I was going for, streetwear seemed like a good place to start.

Even though streetwear boomed throughout the 2010’s, the longevity has been extended by the current pandemic, due to the extensive consumption of loungewear and sportswear, trends such as matching jogger sets have been hugely popular. These have added permanent additions to our wardrobe and may stick around for the foreseeable future. Something that comes with streetwear and hoodies, joggers, track jackets etc. are logos. Lots of logos and brandable products. An example of this would be Supreme and the sheer amount of accessories and lifestyle items (I don’t know what you would classify a boat under) they have customised with their famous box logo is incredible and has gone a lot further than just streetwear. This sort of brand image could be changed and adapted to encompass even more, what I mean by that is, imagine you pay for a filter on Instagram or TikTok, from Supreme, and with this filter, you could make any item you own, Supreme branded. For example, you scan your car with this filter and it scans the surface and adds a box logo on the side, or changes the whole car to the infamous red and white of supreme. We’ve already seen this type of work with Dior and the filter they’ve released relating to their makeup range, a quote read “this means if you don’t feel like heading out to a Dior store, you can wear the accessories you’ve always dreamed of without leaving home” (Bang, 2019). This concept has had beginnings and can certainly be adapted and like everything nowadays, monetised... Something that is a massive problem, isn’t just what we’re buying, but how much we buy, buying a shirt for one night out, or buying 3 of the same t-shirt because why not. 21

3.0

How this story is being told through my exhibition and how it supports my narrative

For my exhibition piece, I wanted to focus on something digital, or a digital theme throughout, as I’m looking at promoting and innovating digital fashion, it seemed like a logical place to start my narrative. With my inspiration taken from Tim Walkers work, I took primary photos looking at perspective and shoot space. Taking images of myself, I experimented creating a completely different background with the use of the perspective tools within photoshop. These images have an almost ‘Tron’ inspiration, with the thick neon lines to line my background creating a digital reality space. Then I overlayed myself, with three filters, showing a variation in appearance, showing how we can wear one thing, but it completely change, depending on how we view it. For this same photoshoot, I experimented with importing secondary imagery in Craig Greens work. Again, looking at changing perspectives and creating new shapes, again using filters to accentuate the different parts of the clothing. Moving the importance away from the clothing itself, but more the colours and shapes created instead.

This thought of focusing on colours and shapes inspired the next two images looking at colour and how I can make this the main focus, the original images are strong dark silhouettes, I’ve then used purples, blues and reds to really offset the colours of the original images. The Maison Margeila image especially tells the story of how we can create something bold and colourful but without the use of making a colourful outfit, by deleting the face and hands, and replacing them with these strong colours again, to show a bright personality behind the clothing.

My next photoshoot was more familiar territory, a street based photoshoot looking at background setting and again adopting this 0.5 zoom on my camera to create a similar aspect to Tim Walker. Again, bringing back the Tron vibes with the backdrops, instead of completely overpowering the backgrounds like I did last time, I looked at infusing it more, making it more part of the environment, instead of the whole environment. Using filters and distortions on the model to change the outfit in different ways. This style will be the subject of my final imagery as I believe it does create a futuristic effect whilst showing we’ll still be wearing similar clothing, but just the way we show it will be different, through the many variations I will show the outfits in, using said filters. My video will be look book like, showing an outfit and movement in said outfit, but in many different colours, effects and shades. Showing the variety within singular clothing in 2030 and how we can buy one outfit but wear it 100 different ways through digital innovation. This will have to be done in a clean way though, otherwise it can appear a bit unprofessional or like an 80’s music video with every effect under the sun just thrown in.

References (n.d.). Retrieved from Clo : https://www.clo3d.com/?gclid=Cj0KCQiAvvKBBhCXARIsACTePW-CmA2p15YtCWRS9wWn3gpXRh9n1JbTOdtRl0KFYXxZNPpGa5b1NJoaAtw5EALw_wcB Audrain, F. (n.d.). Retrieved from 3DFD Virtual Fashion: http://www.3dfashiondesigner.fr/?fbclid=IwAR1_vKs72EHI2WtkaONr-zkva0ybC9IN5wbcVWXOSu-kou1peosG3kiOFS4 Balenciaga Summer Lookbook. (2020). Retrieved from HypeBae: https://hypebae. com/2019/11/balenciaga-resort-2020-lookbook-collection-demna-gvasalia Bang, M. (2019, October 23). Dior Launches a New Augmented Reality Filter on Instagram. Retrieved from L’Officiel: https://www.lofficielusa.com/pop-culture/ dior-instagram-stories-filter-fall-2019 Brain, E. (2020, August 21). Louis Vuitton Enlists Tim Walker to Capture Surrealist Universe in FW20 Campaign. Retrieved from Hypebeast: https://hypebeast. com/2020/8/louis-vuitton-heaven-on-earth-fall-winter-2020-campaign-tim-walker-virgil-abloh Heron Preston. (2021). Retrieved from Vogue: https://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/designer/heron-preston Lunden, I. (2019, June 7). Depop . Retrieved from TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/06/depop-a-social-app-targeting-millennial-and-gen-zshoppers-bags-62m-passes-13m-users/ Off-White. (2020). Retrieved from Tag Walk: https://www.tag-walk.com/en/collection/man/off-white/pre-fall-2020 Palace Spring/Summer 2021. (2021, February). Retrieved from Palace Skateboards: https://www.palaceskateboards.com/lookbook/spring-2021/ Stussy 2021 Lookbook. (2021). Retrieved from Stussy: https://www.stussy.co.uk/ blogs/features/stussy-spring-21-lookbook Supreme Spring/Summer 2021. (2021). Retrieved from Supreme. The New Fear Of God Summer 2020 Essentials. (2020, July 3). Retrieved from https://trendland.com/the-new-fear-of-god-essentials/: https://trendland.com/ the-new-fear-of-god-essentials/ Tim Walker: ‘There’s an extremity to my interest in beauty’. (2019, September 15). Retrieved from The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/global/2019/sep/15/ tim-walker-fashion-photographer-interview-theres-an-extremity-to-my-interestin-beauty Young, C. T. (2021). Retrieved from Institute of Digital Fashion: http://institute-digital.fashion/media/site/831863505-1609772948/the-institute-of-digitalfashion-communeeast-x-digi-gxl-press-release-emailing-pdf.pdf 28