Among practitioners, consultants and fashion media, these practices are called “digital fashion” (e.g. Some of such designers rely on 3D-technology that enables not only digital prototyping and sampling but also digital-only fashion collections. Ethical, economical and creative controversies of the fashion industry have shoved new designer generations to search for alternative ways of providing clothing and fashion experiences that waste less resources, turning to experimentation with service models, production methods and technologies (Black 2019 Särmäkari and Vänskä 2020). Late developments in the area of garment-specific 3D-software have given possibilities to digitalize the traditional fashion design processes and virtualize the fashion imagery, products and spaces (Arribas and Alfaro 2018). The contemporary virtual dimensions of fashion are arguably remediated and refashioned, with new digitized practices relationally coexisting with the traditional and material ones (Crewe 2017). Yet, fashion is fundamentally an embodied practice (Raebild 2015 Entwistle 2000).
Digital visualization has evolved because of the needs of the film and gaming industries, providing new possibilities also to the fashion industry that, by its nature, relies heavily on imagery dissemination (Black 2019 Rocamora 2017 Makryniotis 2018). In the increasingly virtual, or “phygital” space and a networked synergetic community of digital fashion, the professional, authorial, bodily and material boundaries of designers become fluid, transforming the traditional figure of fashion designer.ĭigitalization has led cultural industries such as film, music and media, toward increasing dematerialization. Driven by sociotechnical affordances and elevation of professional pride through ethical, conceptual, artistic and skill differentiation, digital fashion designer becomes also a digital artisan. How and why are they building their fashion design practice on digital 3D-design? How are these companies redefining the fashion design culture and the fashion designer? Drawing from sociology of professions, this article proposes that digital fashion is an emerging subfield within the field of fashion design, differentiating itself from the professional conventions and building new strategies of jurisdiction and legitimation. This article frames the phenomenon of digital fashion and presents an in-depth case study research on two pioneering companies in this area, Atacac and The Fabricant. The increasing use of the 3D-software in fashion design processes is part of a wider “fashion 4.0” digitalization process. The phenomenon of “digital fashion” has been lately addressed in media as the next significant step in the fashion industry.
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