By 2033,
you just might have a smaller
wardrobe than you have now.
Not just because you've already checked
which items spark joy,
but because you probably won't own
as much physical clothing.
I'm not just saying this because typically
we own more than we need,
and we actually only wear
20 percent of our wardrobe,
but because dematerialization
will have taken over fashion.
Think about the books that you own,
the music that we listen to.
They are now in the cloud.
And many of our favorite
stores are online,
and this is happening to our clothes too.
Digital versions of physical products
and digital-only products are making their
way into our lives through gaming,
social media and shopping.
This is an Alexander McQueen
digital tee that you can download
to an avatar to wear inside a game.
Digital fashion is made of pixels
rather than threads,
and it's still a relatively new sector
of the virtual goods industry.
But in the last five years,
it's kind of exploded,
and we've seen zeitgeist moments
from digital-first brands
like the Fabricant,
Tribute brand and Auroboros.
And RTFKT,
who got the world
talking about “phygitals:”
physical and digital versions
that you buy together.
And luxury brands are also in this space,
like Vuitton, Balenciaga and Gucci,
and they're doing something surprising
at surprising price points.
So they're bringing together
the worlds of gaming and luxury.
Some of these items
are less than 20 dollars,
and this Gucci Roblox handbag
actually resold for 4,000 dollars,
which is more than
the physical one retails for,
just an hour after it went
for sale on Roblox.
This is interesting
because quite often our first luxury
purchase is sunglasses or a lipstick.
In the kind of near future,
and especially for the next generation,
that's not going to be the case.
It will be a virtual item
that you can wear,
just like that handbag inside a game.
And if your pockets are deep enough,
you can also pay luxury prices.
CryptoPunks and Tiffany
last year did a collaboration
where they made phygital pendants,
250 personalized ones,
which were the princely sum
of 50,000 dollars.
I'm a fashion academic and innovator,
and I've spent a lot of years researching
how and when people adopt new trends,
whether their dad's sneakers
or Snapchat filters.
And it's kind of ironic because I fell
in love with digital fashion,
because I like vintage fashion,
and the thought of being able to wear
key pieces from fashion history
is something that keeps me
awake late at night.
This jacket by Mugler
has been painstakingly digitized
by Superficial Studio.
What's super exciting is
that we're at the very beginning
of this revolution within fashion,
and when it goes mainstream,
probably within the next five years,
it's really going to change
not only what we wear,
but also how we produce and consume goods,
hopefully for the better.
Just because something isn't physical
doesn't mean it's not real.
And just because something
is dematerialized
doesn't mean it gives you a warm,
funny feeling in your stomach
when you buy it or own it or wear it.
Especially when it looks like this.
So for digital fashion, there's something
really for everybody,
from sportswear to couture
to the kind of straight out ethereal.
And when I see pieces like these
that are so cool
that I want to own them physically,
I get frustrated because there isn't
a word to describe that.
So I’ve started calling it “meta-desire.”
(Laughter)
And I'm still working on an emoji for it,
which I think is very important.
Digital fashion is characterized
by infinite creativity.
When you design in the physical dimension,
you unfortunately have constraints
like gravity, how a fabric drapes,
perhaps the cost of raw materials.
But when you design virtually,
you have limitless possibilities
of say, for example,
what a dress could look like,
how it could perform or function.
This is a piece by Institute
of Digital Fashion,
which is part jewelry, part clothing.
And in the near future,
we have completely new categories
of materials and products.
And magazines are also using this as well.
They're adopting digital fashion
to make the pages and the fashion
become more immersive.
But so what?
That's what my mom often asks me.
"What's the point of digital fashion?"
Well, you have two choices.
You can either wear it
on your real self, your physical self,
or you can wear it on your digital self.
And gamers have already
been doing this for over 25 years.
They already understand
the value of virtual goods.
They've been earning, modifying
and putting skins and cosmetics
on their characters
to wear inside games.
Digital dressing is a thing.
This is me during the pandemic
when I couldn't get to any stores,
but I could get a dopamine hit
and, of course, share it on social media.
(Laughter)
You guys can try this yourselves
if you go to platforms
like The Dematerialised or DressX.
And a relatively new company,
Zero10, also does this.
So digital dressing
is when an extra layer,
like an augmented reality,
is added on to a photo or a video.
And this is something
which I call “soft wearables.”
So effectively you have a kind of,
like a new form of fast fashion,
because you could update the clothes
that you're wearing with new messages,
slogans on a daily basis if you want.
This was a project from Nike
and RTFKT last year,
and something that I'm excited about
in the farther future
is that we won't need to view
this extra digital content
through our mobile phone.
It'll actually emit
from the smart materials
in the fabrics themselves.
But why do we need digital fashion?
Well today,
we already spend
one third of our time online.
And as we move into the next generation
of the internet, known as web3,
we won't just be on the internet,
we're actually going to be inside it.
And just like Dolly,
we already curate different
aspects of who we are
for each of the different platforms
that we show ourselves on.
But we're not just going to be 2D images
inside social media circles
or squares anymore.
We're actually going
to be full-bodied avatars working,
shopping, dating even, in 3D spaces.
If you go to South Korea,
the avatar culture
is already very well embedded.
From K-pop brands
to digital banking advisors.
They're kind of everywhere.
And they have an app called Zepeto.
And this is my Zepeto avatar here,
the one in purple.
This is just a selection
of my digital twins,
the avatars that I use
on a daily basis in messaging
to convey different emotions,
also to meet friends and to go
to digital events in 3D spaces.
And you can probably tell
that I try to convey different aspects
of my personality in my avatars,
different trends
that I want to kind of show,
and also which tribes I want to belong to.
But the metaverse
that we've all been promised
isn't actually here for a while yet.
Some people are quite excited
that it's not going to be here
for a while yet.
However, it's actually
the physical fashion sector
that could be impacted
by digital fashion the most.
Some of you might have heard
a lot of negative hype
and sentiment around NFTs,
non-fungible tokens,
but actually they are key
to the future of digital fashion
because they turn
a regular file, like a jpeg,
into an asset that you can own
and that you can trade.
Brands like Roberts Wood, Prada
and Diesel have all done this.
They've all sold phygital items as NFTs.
For us, as consumers, this is really good
because we can check to see if something
is real or authentic before we buy it.
Also, once we actually buy it,
people can see that it's us
that owns it on a blockchain.
And for designers,
especially emerging ones,
it helps them protect their designs.
And each time this piece is resold,
the designer gets a royalty fee.
This is going to be a game changer
for the fashion sector,
because it redistributes power and money
back towards the original
designers and creators.
But it's not just
about creativity and aesthetics.
Digital fashion could also make us
be more sustainable.
150 billion garments
are manufactured every year,
and many of them are unsold.
This overproduction is unnecessary.
And what we need to see more of --
and I’m talking specifically
to you, fast fashion retailers --
is that instead of just relying
on previous sales history,
you actually showcase
digital versions of products
before you manufacture them.
US brand Finesse already does this
and has no waste in their
production processes.
And how about a fashion tool
that helps you wear that other
80 percent of your wardrobe?
Save Your Wardrobe is an amazing tool
that digitizes your wardrobe,
kind of works a little bit
like a fitness tracker,
helps you style outfits together
and facilitates care and repair,
so that your items last longer.
And it could be a way that you could
help reduce the impact
of the 92 million tons of clothing
that ends up in landfill each year.
So the exciting thing is, the "Clueless"
dream closet is actually already here.
(Laughter)
And lastly, e-commerce return
rates within fashion
are scarily high,
between 40 to 60 percent.
And this has a real environmental cost.
So again, how about if retailers
helped us try things digitally
before we purchased them physically?
John Lewis in the UK
uses artificial intelligence
to do digital dressing
so that consumers can try before they buy.
And what they've been finding
is that people have been trying
over 80 items every time they shop,
and it also makes
online shopping much more fun.
Looking to the future, by 2033,
it's probably likely that you'll have
a Spotify-style subscription
to download the latest fashion to wear
on your work hologram calls
or to flex on your avatar
to a virtual gallery opening.
Just another couple of reasons
why that wardrobe of yours
might have a lot less in it.
Thank you.
(Applause)