These Digital Creators Want to Make Your Wardrobe (Virtually) Endless

Meet three creators pushing the limits of augmented reality and fashion.

What if we told you the season’s hottest designer styles weren't made of leather or chiffon but coding and pixels? Enter digital fashion, an emerging industry so cutting-edge that it makes Jane Jetson’s shrinking wardrobe seem quaint.

If you’ve ever played with Snapchat Lenses, then you understand the basics. Powered by augmented reality, digital fashion allows users to try on an infinite number of outfits without ever actually stepping into a new pair of pants or pulling on a tangible top. These digital “skins” can range from everyday styles—think jeans and a tee shirt—to the most elaborate haute couture or even pieces that defy reality as we know it. Ever dreamed of owning a handbag that changes colors with the snap of your fingers? Or a top that swirls with the paint strokes of Van Gogh’s Starry Night? Now’s your chance.

But digital fashion isn’t just fun. For the first time, it’s making designer clothing accessible to groups that have historically been ignored by the fashion industry. Luxury houses may not offer a size 18, but people of any size can slip into a digital skin. And communities traditionally unable to afford designer clothes will find the virtual world offers more reasonable options. All the while, no animals are harmed for materials, no textile waste is created, and pollution from shipping becomes obsolete. Take note, traditional brands: If you want to keep up, you’re going to have to cater to everyone—sustainably.

If you’re as fascinated by the intersection of fashion and AR as we are, just wait until you meet these creators. We partnered with Snapchat, whose Lens Studio allows artists to design digital wearables for the growing world of social users, to highlight three of digital fashion’s brightest minds and rising stars.

Creative technologist Ommy Akhe never expected to become a bona fide digital fashion designer. “I had the very strong intent of becoming an ethical hacker as a profession,” she says. “AR very much started as a hobby and transitioned into a passion.” That passion is immediately tangible when you first scroll through Akhe’s Snapchat creator profile, where she exists in a unique space, oscillating between scientific and artistic fervor. Her specialty? Digitally customizable designer fashion skins. Scattered among pink-haired selfies are hundreds of project demos. With a tap of a finger, she superimposes work by street artist Dan Witz onto a Chanel handbag or forces audio-reactive colors to dance between Gucci logos on a pair of vintage ankle boots.

Akhe’s excitement about the fashion industry is also what motivates her to make it better. “I wanted to create a way that users could engage with trends that was more sustainable than buying something and wearing it once,” she says. And while some say social media is the ultimate FOMO machine, Akhe sees it as an equalizer in the oft-exclusive tech industry—especially platforms that offer social AR tools to up-and-coming developers. “Snapchat’s Lens Studio has become such a crucial tool in my development process,” says Akhe. “Users don’t have to download additional applications or have access to crazy hardware to be able to engage with AR experiences.”

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Most people don't think twice before purchasing an application, and soon it'll be the same with digital skins.

If owning a wardrobe that exists on your phone and not in your closet seems far-fetched,  well, keep in mind that even the light bulb was once deemed “unworthy of the attention of practical or scientific men.” “Most people don’t think twice before purchasing an application, and soon it’ll be the same with digital skins,” says Akhe. And don’t forget the most obvious perk of impermanence: “If I don’t like it, I can just delete it.”

Get The Look

Using her impeccable taste and the most cutting-edge AR tools, Ahke is taking streetwear styles to touchscreens.

Go ahead and tap the button or scan on Snapchat to unlock the filters and try on head-turning pieces in Ahke’s digital wardrobe.

If Akhe is digital fashion’s Vivienne Westwood—the renegade cruising in her own lane—then DressX founders Daria Shapovalova and Natalia Modenova are the Rodarte sisters: equally untraditional but a bit more buttoned-up. With over 10 years of experience in the traditional fashion industry, the two brought DressX to life in July 2020. “DressX is a Metacloset of digital-only clothes, NFT fashion items, and AR looks,” says Shapavalova. “We target Gen Z and Millennials who demand a new shopping solution that’s digital, sustainable, and affordable.”

These users can access their virtual wardrobes via the DressX website or app, both of which provide a shopping experience remarkably similar to the one we’re used to… until we stumble upon a physics-defying tech couture design by Auroboros Nature retailing for $1,400. Its materials? “Digitally textured silicon, unreal fur, bioluminous flower stems, and pollen.” Whoa. But it’s more than just your standard filter. Because the garment is so complex, users start by submitting a photo of themselves. Over 10 days, the design will be fitted to their image, and then digitally delivered. Haute couture, meet 2021.

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Screenwear' is the next big entry category.

It’d be naive to think established fashion houses are embracing digital fashion lines with open arms, but Shapovalova and Modenova aren’t fazed. They liken the resistance to the industry’s initial reaction to streetwear. “It eventually came into the value proposition of all brands, including luxury brands,” says Shapavalova. “‘Screenwear’ is the next big entry category. Traditional brands can engage with their audience worldwide, optimize influencer marketing campaigns, and add another layer of creativity to traditional fashion designs.”

Get The Look

To make the world of high fashion more accessible and sustainable, DressX has opened its game-changing screenwear shop.

Simply tap the button or scan on Snapchat to step inside the digital boutique and start sampling their revolutionary styles.

Because anyone can access augmented reality via their smartphone, digital fashion and diversity go hand and hand. For Damara Inglês, a designer of extended reality experiences and virtual fashion, this intersection is crucial. Born in Luanda, Angola, and raised in Lisboa, Portugal, Inglês says the fact that digital designs aren’t actually tactile—that they’re there one moment and removed or deleted the next—is exactly why the industry is penetrable by designers from a myriad of backgrounds. Unlike the traditional fashion industry, no one voice controls whose designs are modeled, shot, and published… and whose aren’t.

A recent graduate of the London College of Fashion, Inglês’ portfolio includes collaborations with companies and artists you’d expect from an artist three times her age: Gucci, Microsoft, the Centre for Sustainable Fashion, Crypto Fashion Week, and VR designer Sutu, to name just a few. With the latter, she built a first-of-its-kind immersive fashion show called the Fabric of Reality.

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A first-of-its-kind immersive fashion show

Get The Look

Inglês is bringing abstract art to the world of digital fashion—and you don’t need to be a professional model to walk this runway.

Tap the button or scan on Snapchat if you want to see how you look in these jaw-dropping designs.

Inglês recently collaborated with Snapchat on a project called Exodus for Spectacles, the company’s first foray into glasses that allow wearers to immerse themselves in augmented reality in real-time. Slip on a pair of Spectacles and see yourself in an out-of-this-world design of Inglês’ making: a shade-shifting orange bodysuit with pipe-like machine attachments and wings of every color fluttering behind you. Inglês demos it on her Instagram, her pastel purple braids moving exactly in time with the rainbow wings. It’s at that moment that we really started to realize that this is the true future of fashion.