Digital worlds
What Are Digital Worlds?
Digital Worlds are virtual environments or online platforms where fashion-related experiences, interactions, and transactions take place. These digital spaces use technology to create immersive and interactive experiences, bridging the gap between physical and virtual fashion.
Virtual Fashion Shows & Digital Showrooms
Digital Worlds include virtual fashion shows and digital showrooms that allow designers to present collections without physical limitations. Live streaming and pre-recorded presentations make runway shows accessible to global audiences. Digital showrooms provide a space for buyers, retailers, and industry professionals to explore and order fashion products without needing physical showroom visits.
Online Shopping & E-Commerce Platforms
E-commerce plays a major role in Digital Worlds, making online fashion shopping more convenient. These platforms offer detailed product information, high-resolution images, and secure payment options, allowing users to browse and purchase fashion items anytime, anywhere.
Augmented & Virtual Reality in Fashion
AR and VR technologies bring fashion to life in virtual spaces. Users can try on clothes, accessories, and makeup virtually, see how different outfits would look, and interact with digital fashion models or avatars, enhancing the shopping and styling experience.
Social Media & Fashion Apps
Social media platforms connect fashion brands, influencers, and users, enabling trend discovery, personal styling, and direct brand engagement. Fashion apps provide personalized recommendations, virtual wardrobes, and exclusive promotions, making fashion more accessible and interactive.
In summary, Digital Worlds offer immersive, interactive, and innovative fashion experiences through virtual platforms and technologies. They provide new opportunities for designers, brands, retailers, and consumers to engage, connect, and explore fashion in the digital age.
Case studies
DRESSX – Digital fashion wardrobe for virtual worlds
DRESSX is a dedicated digital fashion retailer that offers 3D garments for AR try-on, social media content, and metaverse environments. By replacing some physical purchases with digital-only looks, it demonstrates how virtual wardrobes can expand creative expression while reducing material production and waste.
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The Fabricant – Digital-only couture and virtual collaborations
The Fabricant operates as a digital-only fashion house, designing garments that exist primarily in virtual environments, game engines, and metaverse platforms. Its collaborations and NFT-based collections illustrate how fashion can decouple aesthetic value from physical production, opening new revenue streams while avoiding material waste.
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Gucci – Immersive branded worlds on Roblox
Gucci has created immersive branded experiences such as Gucci Garden and Gucci Town on Roblox, allowing users to explore virtual environments, collect digital items, and style their avatars with branded looks. These projects show how luxury fashion integrates with gaming platforms to reach new audiences and test virtual-only products as part of broader digital world strategies.
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Balenciaga x Fortnite – AAA gaming as a digital fashion channel
Balenciaga’s collaboration with Fortnite introduced branded skins, accessories, and an in-game Balenciaga hub, alongside a coordinated physical capsule collection. This “phygital” project demonstrates how high-end fashion can inhabit large-scale game worlds, using virtual items as both media and merchandise within a persistent digital ecosystem.
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The Digital Fashion Group – Skills and literacy for fashion’s digital worlds
The Digital Fashion Group is a European-led collaboration between fashion academics and industry innovators that develops education, upskilling, and insight programs around digital fashion, virtual worlds, and new business models. By training professionals to design for avatars, virtual runways, and metaverse platforms, it supports the systemic transition towards digitally native fashion practices.
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References
Akhtar, W. H., Tsegenidi, K., Glovnea, R., & Harwin, W. (2022). A new perspective on the textile and apparel industry in the digital transformation era. Textiles, 2(4), 633–656. https://doi.org/10.3390/textiles2040037
Chan, H. H. Y., Henninger, C. E., Boardman, R., & Blázquez Cano, M. (2023). The adoption of digital fashion as an end product: A systematic literature review of research foci and future research agenda. Journal of Global Fashion Marketing, 15(1), 155–180. https://doi.org/10.1080/20932685.2023.2251033
Gornostaeva, G. (2023). The development of digital commerce in the fashion industry: The typology of emerging designers in London. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 186, 122122.
Sayem, A. S. M. (2022). Digital fashion innovations for the real world and metaverse. International Journal of Fashion Design, Technology and Education, 15(2), 139–141. https://doi.org/10.1080/17543266.2022.2071139
Silvestri, B. (2020). The future of fashion: How the quest for digitisation and the use of artificial intelligence and extended reality will reshape the fashion industry after COVID-19. ZoneModa Journal, 10(2), 61–73.