Digital fashion brand and studio The Fabricant is putting AI-powered fashion front and center with its latest launch.
On September 28 on the web3 platform Cornerstone, The Fabricant will launch the “Primal Rave” couture fashion collection and a corresponding virtual reality experience called “Wholeland.” The moves are part of a new creative and business strategy for the company focused on making profitable and innovative digital fashion.
The company first debuted the “Primal Rave” collection on the CFDA’s Runway360 platform during New York Fashion Week, on September 5. Along with the collection, the “Wholeland” experience, features unique item drops and a rave-like environment where users can interact and socialize. A goal of the experience is to elevate the company’s status in order to secure a presence at Couture Fashion Week in Paris. So far, no digital fashion brands have been invited to a part of the French event.
During the Cornerstone experience on September 28, attendees will be able to interact with the digital environment and purchase the clothes. Each purchase comes with 3D files and an immersive, Instagrammable augmented reality (AR) experience featuring the garment. The garments can be worn on Ready Player Me avatars, which are compatible with over 9,000 games and digital experiences.
“Getting digital fashion items into multiple games, and essentially scaling distribution, has been part of our roadmap,” said The Fabricant CEO Kerry Murphy.
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The Fabricant’s collection was designed using high-fidelity graphics, dynamic lighting and real-time rendering, through Epic Games’ Unreal Engine gaming design engine. Both Nike and LVMH have signed partnership agreements with Epic Games to use the technology. The Fabricant is also using Nvidia, an AI-powered graphics rendering engine that is being used by Apple in its Vision Pro headset launching next year.
Following its 2022 funding round, securing further financial and industry support is a priority for The Fabricant. Its digital fashion clients currently include Weekday and Tommy Hilfiger.
“One of our most successful projects was with Weekday [in June],” said Murphy. Weekday, which is a part of the H&M Group, merged with Monki in April. A pair of sunglasses were sold as digital and physical products, with the digital version selling on the Fabricant website for €5 ($5.33). The physical product was sold in Weekday stores for €130 ($138), with the digital product as an add-on. Twelve percent of the sunglasses’ sales came from the digital product.
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The Fabricant may be the company that is best positioned to push digital fashion to widespread adoption. The first digital-only dress on the blockchain,”Iridescence,” was designed by The Fabricant. In 2019, it sold at auction in NYC for $9,500.
Next, The Fabricant aims to release an AI tool that merges pictures of models, or anyone, with pictures of clothing to allow for easier content creation, personalization and digital fashion collection creation.
“What the smartphone did for the filmmaking and photography industries, these AI tools are going to do for the fashion industry,” said Murphy. “This is going to democratize and make the creation of fashion very accessible for everybody. Anybody will be able to become a fashion model or designer.”
