Real World Fashion Designers Incorporating 3D Graphics & Machinima Into Their Shows

Established fashion designers are starting to incorporate 3D graphics technology and machinima into their presentation shows, the New York Times reported last week. For instance, on September 15, designer Norma Kamali is going to show off "a short film and a look book of images using 3-D technology" on this site here. Another designer, Nicola Formichetti, is working with Eve Online developer CCP to create a fashion avatar (pictured here) depicted in a machinima that we'll be shown in a New York boutique.

Obviously, this is a huge opportunity for Second Life fashion designers, who have arguably created the most diverse and innovative collection of virtual fashion of any 3D platform. But curiously, I haven't seen a whole lot of SL-to-real world crossovers, relative to that giant ecosystem of content. (Hello, Eve Online has a much smaller userbase than SL.) Swedish fashion designer Ann-Sofie Back released a line last year inspired by her experiences as a virtual stripper in SL, Croatian designers Martina Karapetrić & Morana Saračević sell styles in both worlds, and USC fashion maven and TED star Johanna Blakley is a big supporter of SL as a resource for real world design. I also know of an extremely famous Italian designer who was exploring SL a few years ago, but mostly as an art medium. I think it'll take a forward-looking designer working with some great machinima producers to change that. But that would probably also require a Linden Lab business developer who specialized in RL-SL fashion (and all the thorny new issues it presents) working in New York, Paris, and Milan.

Comments

[Iris Ophelia]

I'm so glad you caught this virtual model story, but I think you're missing the big reason that they've got EVE people helping to make it-- EVE avatars look so damn gorgeous on their own, and realistic without getting too deep into the Uncanny Valley. SL doesn't even compare to those gorgeous avatars right now without significant post-processing, and at that point you may as well be animating from scratch anyway.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

Too bad that EVE itself is such a Malthusian cesspit of scum and villainy. There's much about the design that's good solid work, and parts are exceptional.

I think Second Life's potential as a driver of real-life fashion has been limited by the fact that to date, we've mostly been dealing with body paint. Sculpties allowed some clever variations on that, and mesh moreso, but access to those technologies is limited to 3D modelers, whose skill set often doesn't overlap with that of fashion designers.

What I'd love to see, but I'm not holding my breath for, is a clothing creation engine that's smart enough to assign physical properties to bolts of fabric, which will react appropriately when draped, seamed, darted and hemmed like a real garment. When you can draft a flat pattern that works equally well in real life or the virtual world, then you've got something revolutionary.

[Paola Tauber]

Well, I've proposed a jira for Cloth Simulation (https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/CTS-367). I don't think we're going to see a lot of usage of SL in RL fashion for the reasons Iris and Arcadia expressed above. It's not the lack of creativity or the need for a Linden to be based in New York, Paris, Milan and Peckham: as it is, SL hasn't got the eyecandy (Hmalet, did you look at the feet and hands of your avatar, not to mention the rest of the avatar mesh lately?) or even the resemblance of simulating real clothing that I think is the minimum for an industry, like fashion, where 'image' is if not everything at least 90% of the business. Even the latest mesh release, with its 'rigidity', won't do. But it's a step in the right direction. Compare what we see in SL to what CCP has been working on since 2010: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gf26ZhHz6uM

More links on the topic in the jira.