The Future Of Fashion Shows Is Here With The Fabric Of Reality Immersive Fashion Experience
September has long been known as fashion month. A time when editors, buyers, bloggers and more hit New York, London, Milan, Paris and beyond to see the latest creative works from designers and brands.
Recent years have seen a backlash against these fashion weeks – the economics, waste, lack of diversity and environmental impact have caused many to rethink how fashion should be presented and call for change.
When the Covid-19 pandemic halted everything, making travel an impossibility, the clever minds at Verizon’s in-house creative studio, RYOT, along with the Fashion Innovation Agency (FIA), got together to create a fashion show unlike any we’ve ever seen before: The Fabric of Reality.
The Fabric of Reality unites three, young, out-of-the-box thinker designers with leading VR artists for a completely virtual fashion show experience, which first premiered online in July 2020 but lives on in shared VR space, the Museum of Other Realities, until summer 2021 (grab your VR glasses and get watching).
The project paired up designers and artists, including: Damara Inglês, who partnered with interactive artist Sutu to create a realm and garment exploring the relationship between our biological bodies and digital identities; Charli Cohen, who worked with Anand Duncan and Joy on a collaboration with Sanrio character gudetama to explore mental health; and Sabinna, who collaborated with VRHUMAN to create a post-lockdown oasis combining handcraft with hi-tech.
The event breaks down the fashion world’s barriers in a number of ways, democratising the fashion show experience for people around the globe. It illustrates the immense power and potential that virtual, immersive worlds afford designers and creatives, allowing them to reimagine garments in fantastic new ways without having to negotiate the constraints of reality.
Matthew Drinkwater, Head of FIA at London College of Fashion and Joseclyn Wilson, creative technologist at RYOT, two of the main architects behind...
