Digital fashion – virtually rendered garments existing solely online – is sold as a tool for ‘sustainability’, with its converts arguing that virtual garments can replace our need for frequent physical consumption. But does this really address our issues with overconsumption or are we being sold fabricated problems and false solutions?
Advocates argue that digital fashion would reduce rampant consumption of IRL clothing, especially for those that buy new items for the sole purpose of posting them on social media, and that the production of a digital garment creates 97% less carbon than a real garment. However I’m not convinced that this intervention is really solving the issue of overconsumption. It might even be enabling it.
While digital clothes aren’t real, to say that their impact on the planet is lower is a simplification. If worn by influencers, their audience is still seeing a constant rotation of clothing which, virtual or not, reinforces the same cycles of desire, disposability and overconsumption. There’s nothing stopping the likes of Shein copying a digital garment and selling it IRL – while the items of clothing might not exist in the real world, its copycats (and their emissions) certainly will do.
While digital clothes aren’t real, to say that their impact on the planet is lower is a simplification. If worn by influencers, their audience is still seeing a constant rotation of clothing which, virtual or not, reinforces the same cycles of desire, disposability and overconsumption.
With the promotion of digital fashion, we’re seeing the promotion of a false solution that doesn’t get to the root of the problem and instead just circumvents the question of tackling our endless desire to consume. Moving out of the conceptual space and into the realm of commercial applicability, what we’re actually seeing is that the digitisation of fashion is being used as a tool to aid the buying of yet more clothing. Recently an app called Doji was launched by ex-Meta employees, allowing the user to create their own “personalised AI likeness, try on products and explore new looks”. Doji could potentially reduce the amount of clothing returned from online shopping (which can end up in landfill or incinerated) since the user would have a better understanding of what that item looks like on them. But Doji remains a cog in the machine of selling fashion and enables near constant consumption of new clothing. Wouldn’t it just be better to fix the system that thinks sending new clothing straight to landfill is acceptable? And instead of finding ways to fuel our constant need for newness, we need to ask why we feel the urge to consume so much?
Carlee Gomes’ analysis of media consumption and the disappearance of the sex scene in American cinema starts to answer this question but in a different context. She argues that our identities have become so reliant and bound up with our consumption habits as this is “seemingly all that’s left”. In late capitalism as we have been “stripped and socialised out of any real political energy and agency”, the ability to consume becomes the only thing that is ours. By extension she points out that it’s become a stand in for other aspects of being alive in our era and as a result “consuming is activism, it’s love, it’s thinking, it’s sex, it’s fill in the blank.”. Given the existential threat to identity that reduced consumption then presents in our current era, it’s not surprising that digital fashion is not the sustainable fix it was once promised as and has instead become part of the selling machine.
Beyond overconsumption, the other issue that I have with digital fashion is that it forgets what fashion actually is. Fashion is not just sketches and CAD demos. Its magic and artistry lies in creating something 3-D from flat geometry, a form that is capable of emotional transference.
Beyond overconsumption, the other issue that I have with digital fashion is that it forgets what fashion actually is. Fashion is not just sketches and CAD demos. Its magic and artistry lies in creating something 3-D from flat geometry, a form that is capable of emotional transference. Digital fashion is never going to hold your arse the way a pair of tight, stiff vintage jeans can, it’s never going to provide the armour that a good outfit can against a bad day. It’s never going to become imbued with memories, with the smells of a lover’s cologne or traces of where their hands once were .
There’s an intimacy in knowing someone’s wardrobe, having seen someone enough to know their favourite items and the repeats and rhythms in their style. Sometimes their style even echoes into your own like leftover fingerprints of connection. I certainly can’t claim my style as entirely my own. My chunky shoe habit? Stolen from my sister. My French chore jacket? A nod to boys I used to fancy. And vice versa, my baroque pearl earrings became an item that unites me and all my old housemates. Even now, all living different lives in different cities, at least our ears look the same. Of the seventeen images I’ve posted on my Instagram this year, five of them are me sporting the same jacket, four of them feature the same long skirt my mum used to wear in the nineties, and four of them are in the same jeans. Wardrobes are meant to be repeated and we need to get more comfortable with that and working out who we are beyond what we consume. Trend based consumption robs us of this development of style and, ultimately, of self.
It’s not just clothing that is falling victim to digitisation – AI rot is also quickly ripping through the fashion industry and plunging us deeper into the modern capitalist hellscape. Earlier this year, H&M announced their new AI “digital twins” of 30 models, and they’re far from the shit avatars of Zuckerberg’s Web3 Metaverse. Instead of looking like Miis about to destroy a round of Wii Sport, these models are more like Scarlett Johansson as a human clone in The Island. While the models themselves have allegedly been paid for their likeness and are benefiting from this transition, these AI models remove the ecosystem of creatives needed to produce this sort of imagery, from the production staff, photographers, stylists, makeup artists and everyone else involved. The digital avatars claim to be a balm to the ‘problem’ of models needing to be “in New York and Tokyo on the same day”, but in reality this is an issue very few actually face. Once more we’re seeing technology presented as a solution to an issue that it isn’t solving; the only thing being solved here is the question of how companies like H&M can increase their margins.
It’s not just clothing that is falling victim to digitisation – AI rot is also quickly ripping through the fashion industry and plunging us deeper into the modern capitalist hellscape.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t actually hate technology, I just think we need to be mindful about the type we deploy. I especially love tech that helps me to connect with the IRL world. Some of my recent favourites include: Whering, an app that helps you to digitise your wardrobe so you can make sure you’re getting the most wear out of items because remember the most sustainable items are the ones you already own; Merlin Bird App that is slowly teaching me what each bird looks and sounds like after recording a little clip of the birdsong I hear in different locations; and glitch’s blossom watch which has taught me five types of trees that blossom in springtime. What I am ‘anti’ is tech that alienates us further from the IRL world.
Instead of walking like zombies into the new age of digitisation, we need to interrogate the necessity and environmental impact of the technology we’re deploying. The worst example of this is how AI’s energy needs are being used to justify environmental rollbacks. In the US, Trump recently signed an order to expand coal power in the name of AI needs, and new natural gas stations are being built just to power data centres at a time where we should be massively increasing our renewable capacity instead. Audible recently announced that it will begin using AI voices for audiobooks. Speaking to The Guardian, translator Frank Wynne put it well: “No one pretends to use AI for translation, audiobooks, or even writing books because they are better; the only excuse is that they are cheaper. Which is only true if you ignore the vast processing power even the simplest AI request requires… In the search for a cheap simulacra to an actual human, we are prepared to burn down the planet and call it progress.”
I’ll go a step further: I’m not even anti-AI. I’m anti-AI when it replaces the creative outputs that people should be paid for. When it’s used wastefully and without regard to its environmental impact, it makes me think of this tweet:
AI was sold to us like a universal rich parent, something that would free up time and capacity to give us more leisure time and ability to be more creative, and maybe even enter the world of Aaron Bastani’s ‘fully automated luxury communism’. But unsurprisingly, in the hands of tech giants it’s become a thief of creativity and expertise. Instead of reducing the hours worked because of the time AI can save us, we’re instead expected to do even more in that time. Now more than ever, with the ease in which we deploy digital ‘solutions’ to IRL problems, it’s important to interrogate the necessity of these solutions and be alert to the fact that often these false solutions are proposed to distract from the necessity of doing the work in the real world. We don’t need digital fashion, we need workers rights, properly priced clothing and an interrogation of our rampant consumerism. I don’t want to see you in digital boots online, I want to see you in the boots you’ve owned for a decade.
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