The 3D Revolution Won’t Wait

I love fabrics. I love digging into details. I love seeing how something drapes or flows, and agonising over the buttons, the zippers, or the choice of a wrapped seam. In short: I love production, and it has been my profession for almost 20 years. I think most of us who work with fashion love the touch and feel of the fabrics, and the intricate details of the garments and products. But that passion comes with a cost; It is not sustainable to experiment endlessly using finite resources. And it is certainly not efficient.

Recent reports show that the gap between the industry’s sustainability goals and what we do in our daily operations, and in sourcing and production, is widening. Fashion may be moving closer to some of its environmental goals in other areas, but in the core business of creating, iterating, and conducting technical development, most of us are still heavily reliant on physical prototypes and samples.

It is encouraging to see that the ambition among creative and technical designers for sustainability is high, and I know from experience that we all want to improve and work in a better way for the future, but setting goals is one thing – to live up to them and act for change is another. 

Why 3D?

I have dedicated the last three years to digitisation in general and Digital Product Creation in particular. That might seem strange given my self-proclaimed love for the physical product, but nothing could be further from the truth. I’m a firm believer in the idea that the digitalisation of our industry will not reduce creativity or limit the passion for fashion and product – if anything it will enhance it.

Enabling smart processes and supporting early decisions using digital assets, for instance, does not mean that the quality of the end product will be jeopardised. Instead, these new processes free up time, since we can make product decisions earlier and with greater confidence –  which gives the approved styles that will reach the end consumer more time and focus in technical development, engineering, fit, and other critical lifecycle stages. The goal is the same as with conventional product development – to put products on the market that we are proud of and the customers will wear and love for a long time.

And to be completely frank, we in the fashion industry are quite off-trend when it comes to taking advantage of technology in service of that goal. Looking at other industries, 3D design and simulation have been used as a creative, collaborative and supporting tool for decades. The car industry started with digital CAD and 3D designs in the 80’s. Shortly after architecture and construction followed, as well as industrial and product design in virtually every field. Essentially all the other creative and design-driven fields are now digitised, and their journeys (and even some of the industry-agnostic tools and best practices they use) exist as templates and inspiration for fashion to follow.

When I founded Creation Fields, it was to help companies find the right path in the jungle of digitalisation and digital product creation, because while those templates are out there, actually adapting them to fit fashion’s unique challenges and particular ways of working is not as straightforward as it might sound. 

Like the team at The Interline remarked in the first DPC Report in 2022, after the first years of the pandemic, the interest in 3D visualisation exploded and many, myself included, saw its advantages in a clearer light than ever before. With physical prototyping and sampling taken off the table, it became more obvious that  3D could be seen as more than just another tool in the design and development toolbox –  it had the potential to be a disruption in the industry’s entrenched ways of working, a change that could forever transform the fashion industry as we see it today. The journey to 3D in fashion had been underway for a long time prior, but thanks to a combination of technological maturity and external drive, we were now talking in terms like “photorealistic garments” and “products that come to life” in the digital world – a sudden and significant step in the right direction.

In addition to these new technologies, an unforeseen positive consequence of the pandemic was that old obstacles and barriers were removed. The infrastructure of digital meetings and presentations became standard practice. The switch towards the digital way of working was off to a flying start, and for a lot of organisations that progress has not been walked back even with a return to hybrid or in-person working. For many of the world’s major brands, digital assets are now driving creative and commercial decision-making to an extent it would have been difficult to predict just a few years ago. 

So Why Doesn’t It Feel Like A Revolution Yet?

Based on the catalysing effect that COVID had on 3D and DPC adoption, the recent slowdown of the global economy should have been a cue for even deeper deployment. The conditions were right for another explosion of interest in more cost-effective, agile, collaborative methods that free brands from the need to bind up capital in physical design, development, and production of products that then sit in market channels, unsold. But instead, I see companies getting lost in what from the start seemed to be a well-mapped 3D journey – either pulling back from initial investments, or putting the brakes on extending the value of digital product creation outside of pilot programmes and isolated deployments that were confined to design and development departments. 

I have seen companies invest significant time and resources in digital transformation – striving to become leaders in the field – getting lost due to minor issues on the way. Or struggling to build trust or secure wider enterprise buy-in into what should be a clear-cut upgrade to processes that are driving out of lockstep with a fast-changing market. And the volatile global economy has also made many companies hesitant or even afraid to continue spending on innovation, resulting in cutting Research and Development budgets, when they should remain the same, or just be used in smarter ways. 

Pattern makers and designers are commonly the first ones to board the digital train, creating visualisations of products in 3D. Design and Pattern schools and education now have 3D on their curriculums, and we tend to expect that new employees will manage the 3D tools. However, what many companies do is add 3D to  traditional workflows. Yet, this is the first mistake. We should not ADD work to get 3D in the process; digital product creation is not an additive burden, but instead a way to sidestep so much of the inefficiency that characterises the way design teams currently work. But if those possibilities are positioned as extra work, or a new toolkit to learn, then adoption is not destined to follow.

When implementing 3D, brands, retailers, and their partners instead need to think and work cross-functionally throughout the organisation, and to use digitalisation in a smart way. For example, in Creation Fields, we often start by  working with carry-over products, where an existing style is just being updated in new colours. The styles are true and tested at the pattern and material level, and by visualising these in high-grade digital renders of the new colours – instead of creating entirely  new samples – production costs and environmental impact are reduced. Switching physical sale samples for digital renders in this relatively easy way has helped some of our clients cut their sample cost by 80%, and the reduction in terms of carbon emission has been calculated to be over 90%. These are hard positive numbers at a time when fashion is in desperate need of them.

And besides being more sustainable and more cost-efficient, 3D is also faster. We routinely work with product teams to identify the decisions that can be taken based on 3D, and we see that such decisions lead to cutting time to market by up to 50%. What’s more: as the quality and accuracy of digital assets improves, there are more of those decisions that can be taken without a physical sample than ever before!

Another area where 3D can be used easily and with great success is in e-Commerce. Creation Fields have supported several consumer-facing A/B tests together with clients, where 3D images have been used in online sales with conversion rates as high – and sometimes even higher than – conventional photos. This drastically reduces the step from production to sales and marketing, while cutting costs for photoshoots and making styles available to market (across both B2C and B2b wholesale channels) much quicker. 

To me, this is how digital transformation should work. And the arguments for deploying it in these kinds of use cases are extremely strong – certainly strong enough to overcome any hesitance or inertia that comes from brands having long-established ways of working that they don’t want to disrupt, or from cold feet relayed to the current economic climate. 

If you, as a brand, need a better, faster, more cost-effective way to work: digital product creation is it. And it  can  be implemented wherever there is the best use case for it, depending on your specific strategic objectives. 

If you start with the lowest-hanging fruit in your organisation, the transition will be easier and the next steps will appear naturally. Whether it’s design decisions, digital fittings, marketing, or sales. Physical samples will not disappear completely, but we as an industry need to substantially reduce this unsustainable, expensive, wasteful way of working now that we have ready access to the tools we need to do so. 

So I want to use this article – and everything else contained in this report – to encourage the digital teams, the people pioneering the process, and the executives and department heads spearheading and sponsoring it, to keep going despite the current challenges. When the market changes, or the wider financial situation is applying restrictions: revisit the goals, rework the strategies, be agile, and adapt to the new tools and conditions. Just remember to keep working on it, because the business case for digital product creation is stronger today than it’s ever been.

To business leaders looking for ROI on joining the next steps in the digital revolution, my message is simple: when you switch part of your process to use 3D representations of your designs, you reduce the number of physical samples, which will save you time and money. At Creation Fields, we have seen multiple companies saving sample costs by switching part of their sample collections to 3D, first season. And all this with the benefit of lowering the company’s and industry’s carbon emissions. 

What you choose to do with those digital assets afterwards – and there is a huge possibility horizon out there – is up to you, but it’s eminently possible today to start with an easy ROI, and then to build on top of that to deliver compounded benefits across the value chain – all from a single commitment to doing things digitally where it makes the most sense to do so.

The question should really be: what would be the return on NO investment?

The simple fact is that there are not enough resources to continue making as many samples as we do today. The current design and development process is depleting the planet, and placing a large burden on the people in the supply chain. Transporting all these samples further adds to CO2 emissions – all of which is largely unnecessary if we are able to put the confidence and trust into 3D assets that they deserve. 

And as tempting as it can be to see this as a choice, there are more regulations and standards for sustainability being introduced or expanded all the time, and digitalisation will be one way to transform in the right direction. 

Last but not least – attracting the best employees will be difficult for companies that are not joining the revolution. Talented, creative, and driven employees will be attracted to companies that evolve and invest in the future – from making the right values-driven choices, to equipping their creative and commercial teams with the best possible tools.

These changes will happen. This season or next. The choice you face is whether  to be in the forefront or lag behind.  

It might not feel like it today, but in ten years from now, I am confident that looking back at this time we will see that we were in fact, in the middle of a revolution – the same revolution that other industries have already paved a path towards. All fashion needs to do is have the confidence to follow it.