Vogue: 5 Digital Artists Reimagining The Fashion Show

“We’re just scratching the surface of where this will go”: 5 digital artists reimagining the fashion show

Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic closed borders and made mass gatherings impossible, designers have been forced to find innovative new ways of presenting collections virtually. In November, Gucci staged GucciFest, a week-long mini-festival featuring 15 short films from emerging designers such as Bianca Saunders, Priya Ahluwalia and Charles De Vilmorin.

Since then, we have seen Demna Gvasalia introduce Balenciaga’s AW21 collection with Afterworld: The Age of Tomorrow—a multiplatform experience that was built using the latest in virtual reality capture technology—and next week sees the social networking site IMVU host a digital catwalk show starring Collina Strada, Gypsy Sport and Mowalola, among others.

While fashion has dabbled in this realm before (both Louis Vuitton and Prada have dressed characters from League of Legends and Final Fantasy games respectively), this past year has seen a new generation of designers—including Collina Strada’s Hillary Taymour, Casey Cadwallader at Mugler and Marine Serre—engage with digital artists looking to push the boundaries of what can be achieved with emerging technologies.

Here, some of those creatives talk about the new digital frontier for fashion.

1. Freeka Tet and Jefferson Wenzel

Two of the collaborators Hillary Taymour tapped to work on her Collina Strada Pre-Fall 2021 video game and film, which premiered as part of GucciFest, were French-born, New York-based multidisciplinary artist Freeka Tet and animator Jefferson Wenzel. The latter also worked on Taymour’s SS21 presentation, animating characters illustrated by artist Sean-Kierre Lyons before going on to develop some of those ideas for the video game.

Tet turned Wenzel’s video game into the film Collina Land and went on to collaborate with Taymour again on her AW21 presentation, transforming the likes of playwright Jeremy O Harris and model Ruby Aldridge into Animorphs-inspired characters.

Jefferson, after working on the SS21 animation, what were some of the ideas you were interested in developing for the video game?

“Video games can provide a level of engagement that I think traditional media sometimes can't reach. It was about creating something that was both fun as well as communicative, and video games are the perfect medium, especially for the fashion world. Fashion is about the visual, as are video games. Traditional fashion shows are definitely a great demonstration of a brand's visual identity, but being able to play as a model wearing pieces from a collection and explore a virtual world with them is especially memorable.”

Freeka, how would you like to see fashion designers engage with digital in the future?

“I would be interested in seeing them working more on selling design only (3D models, patterns), so you could just have garments custom-made, based on a design, and then limit the production to only what is needed.”

2. Dimension Studio

When Balenciaga released its AW21 collection via a video game, it was hailed by fashion press and gamers alike as a watershed moment in realising the exciting possibilities of combining luxury and the virtual world.

An immersive adventure set in a city in 2031, the project was a collaboration between different studios across the globe (Dimension Studio, Substance & Inhalt, and Streamline). Working in Paris during lockdown, Dimension Studio used a Polymotion stage truck (a truck fitted with 106 cameras) to capture 50 models using cutting-edge volumetric filming, turning them into avatars for the video game.

Why do you think this was the right moment to try something as ambitious as this for the fashion industry?

Simon Windsor, co-founder of Dimension Studio: “We’re just scratching the surface of where this will go—with interactive worlds on the web, the use of game-engine tech, avatars and volumetric video all provide powerful new ways to bring fashion worlds to life and for brands to extend their universe. Designers are showcasing in new ways, shoppers are able to try before they buy, and customers are experiencing brands in more meaningful and sustainable ways.” 

Will interactive, immersive experiences be an alternative to fashion shows in the future?

“In this future, the only limit is our imagination—we can break the laws of physics and brands can create interactive playgrounds to immerse people. This can supercharge the ways in which fashion and retail brands get creative and crucially make the experience more entertaining and tailored for customers. Moving from the physical to the virtual opens huge opportunities for fashion and retail—without the constraints of geographies and physics, there are no limits to creativity or sustainability.”

3. Actual Objects

When Claire Cochran, Rick Farin and Nick Vernet formed their creative studio, Actual Objects, in 2019, they derived their name from “the physicality of digital things and how they can be as real, meaningful and powerful as a painting or a sculpture”. Coming from different disciplines (painting, music and architecture), Actual Objects is able to balance work for giant brands such as Nike as well as create edgy, disturbing visuals for Hood By Air, Ottolinger and in the case of Marine Serre’s AW19 show Radiation sending masked models walking through a phosphorescent Paris.

You’ve collaborated with Marine Serre on two films—how does her aesthetic chime with your worldview?

“Our conceptual viewpoints are aligned. When she approached us, we were incredibly excited—there was honestly no other designer we would rather work with. It’s all about building a world and creating characters, using the clothes as a jumping-off point to create a meaningful and potent visual.”

What do you want the viewer to take away from your work?

“We want people to consider the implications of technology and what it might mean in a world where the physicality of the space around them is beginning to dissipate. To us, CGI and digital art, in general, is much less powerful when it deals with escapism (immersion), and more engaging when it seeks to provide a secondary perspective to our real lives; ie creating not a fantastical, otherworldly place, but a space that acts as a mirror world to our own. It’s about creating imagery as reflection, that allows viewers to look back on themselves and grasp a new perspective.”

4. Andrei Warren

When Casey Cadwallader wanted to morph his friend and muse Bella Hadid into a digital avatar for Mugler’s trippy SS21 film, director Florian Joahn turned to Andrei Warren of Misato Studio. With Cadwallader overseeing things from Paris, Hadid was scanned using body-mapping cameras in a New York studio to create a virtual avatar, who opened the film in white tank top and jeans before transforming into a Pegasus-centaur hybrid leaping off the Palais Garnier.

What was the brief for the Mugler SS21 project?

“Casey had a super clear idea in mind, which was that every detail and moment in this video had to be astonishing and something never seen before. After a constant back and forth, we came up with a dystopian avant-garde aesthetic where the contemporary was mixed with a close future mood where many barriers were supposed to have already been broken.”

Tell us about the process of creating a digital avatar of Bella Hadid and transforming her into Pegasus for Mugler?

“The moment they told us we had Bella scanned and that we were supposed to make her fly, we couldn't believe it. We started merging Bella and texturing her so everything was on point. The final challenge was to animate her and make it look real.”

5. International Magic

In January, in the UK’s particularly bleak third national lockdown, Martine Rose gave us a sense of togetherness with a one-off digital presentation of her AW21 collection. Titled What We Do All Day, the audience was taken inside a 3D-rendered housing block; each door opening to give us a glimpse of the reassuringly mundane activities undertaken by people in lockdown from all over the globe (including Rose’s own family).

Helping her realise this empathetic vision were Adam Rodgers and Stefan Endress of International Magic, who first collaborated in 2017 on a digital documentary for FKA twigs and have gone on to work with Maison Margiela, artist Judy Chicago and 032c magazine.

How did the concept for Martine Rose’s tender and intimate presentation evolve?

“Martine's approach is human and community first, and she seeks to expose extraordinary moments from ordinary scenarios, so we began to document this shared period of isolation and compose a presentation framework. There is something compelling and voyeuristic about catching a glimpse of people’s private lives, and under the circumstances, everyone across the world was in a similar situation, so it felt natural to move in this direction and continue to refine the concept together. Although one of the key drivers for us doing this show ended up being a global pandemic, we felt that the wheels were already in motion.”

There were timed showings for What We Do All Day—was the aim to recreate the communal experience of going to a fashion show?

“Yes, that was part of the reason why we only did three presentations of the show. Throughout the process, we were thinking about ways that we could elevate or heighten the experience for the viewer. However, we also wanted to isolate elements from physical experiences and recreate the same feeling in a digital environment. By being something that won’t be repeated, it forces you to be present in the moment.”