<p>Where is the sustainable dream of fashion heading?</p>

<p data-start="294" data-end="1047" style="text-align: left;">Digital fashion has been touted as the new sustainable path for the fashion industry, although its reality still presents many unresolved issues. For many, the first encounter with this concept was seeing Lil Miquela wearing Prada, or influencers appearing on newsfeeds in outfits with bizarre movements, as if made of liquid or defying the laws of gravity. While occasionally gaining attention, digital fashion largely exists in its own rather "lowkey" world.</p>
<p data-start="294" data-end="1047" style="text-align: left;">Then COVID hit, and the fashion industry lost the foundation of the shows that sustained it season after season. The absence of live shows led the public to view digital fashion in a different, exaggerated light. While designers and fashion week organisers struggled to maintain seasonal rhythms, digital fashion emerged in two ways. One was through garments rendered in a digital space. The other was through real clothing presented via livestream or film. One approach eliminated the need for physical garment production, thus avoiding waste and pollution. The other reduced the number of international flights required to hold shows.</p>
<p data-start="1519" data-end="1841" style="text-align: left;">Caroline Rush CBE, CEO of the British Fashion Council, once said that bringing London Fashion Week to a digital platform reduces the need for travel and thus reduces the carbon footprint. According to her, the pandemic served as a major reminder for the industry and hopefully will pave the way for more sustainable changes in the long term. Annabelle Azad&eacute;, founder of Wear the Future, the platform behind the first digital cruise show using the "see now, buy now" model, shares a similar view. She says the pandemic forced them to find a new format and video was both the most effective and environmentally friendly option.</p>

<p data-start="2123" data-end="2526" style="text-align: left;">The significant reduction in travel demand during fashion week is clearly beneficial. A 2020 study measured the amount of emissions from buyer and designer travel to the four major fashion weeks: New York, London, Paris, and Milan. The figure reached 241,000 tons of CO2e, equivalent to 51,000 vehicles in circulation or enough to power the Eiffel Tower for over three thousand years.</p>
<p data-start="2528" data-end="2863" style="text-align: left;">But those four weeks are just the tip of the iceberg. According to Fashion United, the world currently has over a hundred fashion weeks taking place in cities from Lagos, Melbourne, Rio de Janeiro to Vancouver, Shanghai, Copenhagen and Seoul. The amount of emissions from all these events certainly far exceeds the figures recorded in the oldest fashion capitals.</p>
<p data-start="2865" data-end="3220" style="text-align: left;">While London Fashion Week is helping designers and partners combine existing technology to tell stories through visuals, sound, and physical products, Helsinki Fashion Week (HFW) in Finland goes even further. It's one of the few fashion weeks in the world that places sustainability at the heart of its operational structure, materials, production processes, and brand messaging. <span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">The event takes place entirely in the digital space of the Digital Village, a kind of social metaverse. Buyers and editors don't need to be present on any stage; they simply use avatars to participate from home. Shows by Patrick McDowell (NDA) and Tess Van Zalinge can be viewed anytime. Viewers can even try on outfits in the URL space and pre-order physical versions to wear in real life (IRL).</span></p>

PATRICK McDOWELL Spring Summer 2020 HFW 3D Helsinki - Fashion Channel

<p data-start="826" data-end="1221" style="text-align: left;">Gr&eacute;goire Willerval from Scotomalab, the studio behind HFW's digital design series, says that making clothes using 3D technology has many advantages. It saves time, reduces materials, avoids overproduction, and eliminates the need to ship clothes around the world.</p>
<p data-start="1565" data-end="1981" style="text-align: left;">James Joseph, the founder of CYBR, the first NFT magazine, envisions a more distant future. He says that in a few years, people will wear AR glasses as a daily habit. The digital world will overlap with the real world, and digital fashion will become a second layer of clothing that everyone can see.</p>
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<p data-start="0" data-end="227" data-is-last-node="" data-is-only-node="" style="text-align: left;">Since the COVID lockdown, many brands have begun to transform themselves to join the digital fashion ecosystem. <span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">Gucci collaborated with The Sims to create a digital version of their campaign. Marc Jacobs and Valentino appeared in Animal Crossing, the game that millions clung to during months of isolation, becoming a platform for reinventing personal style with virtual clothing. Creator Kara Chung even organised a fashion show within the game, which was both fun and stylish.</span></p>
<p data-start="0" data-end="227" data-is-last-node="" data-is-only-node="" style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">However, some doubts remain.</span> <span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px; text-align: justify;">While many people choose fast fashion for its affordability, will they spend money on items costing tens or thousands of pounds, only to wear them in the digital world and not in real life? Dressing for an avatar and dressing for oneself are two very different needs. An outfit that is physically present always feels more valuable than something you only see on a screen. This is perhaps the boundary that digital fashion must find a way to cross if it wants to become a widespread habit.</span></p>
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<p data-start="0" data-end="689" data-is-last-node="" data-is-only-node="" style="text-align: left;">When the fashion industry is no longer characterised by constant plane landings and factory day and night, it's easy to believe it's a step forward. But behind that seemingly light surface lies a massive technological system that silently consumes energy every second. The United Nations once noted that since 2016, data centres serving the digital world have emitted about two per cent of global greenhouse gases, equivalent to the aviation industry. Because they don't see the smoke or the waste, many people still take it for granted that simply labeling something as digital automatically means it's sustainable. Meanwhile, if it wants to go far, the industry must confront and question the very foundations upon which it stands.</p>
<p data-start="0" data-end="689" data-is-last-node="" data-is-only-node="" style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">HFW attempted this when collaborating with Normative to measure the impact of their most recent show. The report showed carbon emissions per guest dropped from one hundred and thirty-seven kilograms to less than one kilogram when the event went entirely online. While this sounds encouraging, founder</span> <span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">Morten Ros&eacute;n explains that the overall figure for the entire event was actually higher because the number of attendees increased many times over. A common paradox when technology opens its doors to the masses.</span></p>
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<p data-start="1295" data-end="1721" style="text-align: left;">DRESSX, a purely digital platform that recently launched an AR application, also attempted to measure the environmental impact of virtual clothing in 2020. A digital design generates only three percent of the CO2 emissions compared to physical clothing and saves an average of over three thousand liters of water. This calculation includes the process of creating the design and sending the file to the customer, but does not account for cloud data storage, which silently consumes energy every day.</p>
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<div data-message-author-role="assistant" data-message-id="82f2543c-062b-4ede-8fad-4f43dbe4cde1" dir="auto" class="min-h-8 text-message relative flex w-full flex-col items-end gap-2 text-start break-words whitespace-normal [.text-message+&amp;]:mt-1" data-message-model-slug="gpt-5-1">
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<div class="markdown prose dark:prose-invert w-full break-words light markdown-new-styling" style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: justify; letter-spacing: 0px;">What's less noticed is how digital clothing is bought and sold. Some items are paid for like regular online orders, but you receive a picture of yourself in the new outfit. Others are minted as NFTs and recorded on the blockchain. Ethereum is the largest platform for these transactions, but it operates on a Proof of Work mechanism that consumes an incredible amount of electricity. A single transaction can use the same amount of electricity a US household uses in four and a half days. If everything continues to grow at its current pace, the impact from data centres and blockchains could balloon, much like the story of fast fashion once did.</span></div>
<div class="markdown prose dark:prose-invert w-full break-words light markdown-new-styling" style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div>
<div class="markdown prose dark:prose-invert w-full break-words light markdown-new-styling" style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">At this point, digital fashion is not a magic bullet. It has clear advantages, but also many limitations. That doesn't mean the industry needs to revert to physical clothing, where the issues of waste and emissions are ever-present. What the industry needs is a spirit of continuous questioning and the ability to see the dark side even in the cleanest-looking things.</span></div>
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Is Digital Fashion the Future of Sustainability?

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