Fashion’s Next Generation: How Technology And Culture Are Combining

[Featured image: Felix Meritis – The Messyverse – JVDPhotography.]

We tend to think of the world standing at a crossroads: a digital future in one direction, and a physical past in the other.  How many times have we heard “digital transformation” depicted as an inexorable pull forwards? How often do we talk about “analogue” in a negative sense?

For fashion, and for culture as a whole – since the two go hand-in-hand – I think this is a false premise. The future should not be defined by a complete departure from the physical, but by a careful balance between the two strands, and a new narrative that brings together the best of the physical world and the most potent possibilities of the digital one.

In the context of fashion, that means identifying where the industry’s deep heritage meets the new digital frontier, and it means being both critical of some of the unfounded promises of “digital fashion,” at the same time as recognising that, for a new generation of fashion buyers who are collectively shaping the culture of tomorrow, status symbols are now as likely to be digital as they are physical.

This is also just thinking about fashion as product – as objects to be bought and worn. But the industry also has a huge impact on the wider cultural conversation, and while it’s difficult to prove some of the much-praised claims about consumers buying digital garments instead of physical ones (with a possible net sustainability benefit) it’s clearer that the digital side of the industry has helped to elevate awareness of over-consumption.

But to what extent does the next generation of fashion makers and consumers understand and sympathise with the sector’s long physical legacy and deep heritage? Does a cohort raised on the idea of digital fashion run the risk of becoming desensitised to the industry’s hard-fought history of craft, marketing, and communications? Or does the future look more positively blended, with digital and physical operating naturally in tandem?

To answer those questions, we have to start by evaluating why – and how – technology became such a potent cultural force to begin with.

The Shift: How Technology Came To Define The Aesthetics Of The Future

Technology, more than any other narrative in the last 30 years, has been the prevailing “spirit of the time”. In almost every instance, across every medium and every channel, we have become deeply acquainted with its power to mold, disrupt, shape and percolate through so much of our society. On a daily basis, we all interact with, become inspired or frustrated by, and have our interactions and opinions shaped by technology.

This is why talking about technology is, by definition, talking about society and by proxy, talking about culture. Technology discussions often focus on automation, or the power of technology to improve companies’ bottom lines, but in my opinion the real, visceral property of technology is the influence it has on aesthetics. Because that’s the business that fashion is in.

There is perhaps no better example of this than the extent to which consumer technology has eaten into the fashion accessory market, with people spending money on smartphones that they would once have spent on accessories. For a huge market segment, devices have become tools for self expression, and the focus of a new kind of fashion that blends digital functionality with aesthetic form.

This is the space that digital fashion is trying to insert itself into: standing on a thin line between fashion and technology, and asking big questions about how far the pendulum might swing in the opposite direction.

Because while it’s unlikely that augmented reality try-on is going to make a quantifiable dent in the trend for bulk buys and social media try-on hauls, the idea of digital fashion is still working its way into the public consciousness and starting to challenge some long-established notions of what people value, what they covet, and what constitutes a signifier of status.

Take Apple Airpods and smart watches.For the generation that doesn’t remember, or didn’t grow up in the wake of the craftsmanship of Valentino, Alexander McQueen and the like, these devices hold the same kind of  status  as the low-price-point luxury portion of the fashion market – something that luxury will have a real struggle fighting against .

For Gen Z and Gen Alpha, status symbols also come in the form of influencer-driven fashion statements. And it goes without saying that the ostentatious attempt of luxury brands to keep up with this shifting definition of celebrity, has barely made a dent into the new generation’s perception of who holds the creative reins – and it’s arguable whether that dent is for better or worse.

For the wider population, the excitement of catwalks has now been replaced by big tech new gadget releases, and the accessory market taken by Rayban’s partnership with Meta to produce the second-generation smart glasses – not to mention the Humane AI pin – has made brands bend to start offering phone cases and Airpods pouches as an option alongside their more traditional accessories.

What we saw on Coperni’s catwalk with Naomi Campbell’s walk, wearing the aforementioned AI pin, will become more common, rather than an anomaly. Technology is making significant inroads into what we wear – as well as into the industry’s balance sheet: in 2020, Apple’s apparel accessories sales were 25% of all luxury brands sales, combined.t’s not an overstatement to say that technology is eating through the “status symbol” idea that once was predominantly retained by fashion, and possibly only shared with the automotive and watchmaking industries.

But wearable technology is only part of the picture. While there’s no disputing the influence that consumer devices have had on what we wear, and what fashion creates, the next stage of technology’s inroads into fashion are likely to come from new identities, new sub-cultures, and new spaces that the digital-first generation inhabits, and therefore embodies, as their own.

Digital Subcultures

In all the above, I’m sure some readers will  think these statements are either fictitious or trivial, but only a short sighted eye would be so sure that the role the fashion industry plays in the generations to come will be the same as it has been in the past. And there is no real reason to assume that traditional clothing categories, existing channels, or entrenched mediums will continue as they have in the past decades.

For the next generation, the affinity for legacy brands is already fading. This is a new cohort: a group of people that has far more alternatives, doesn’t take kindly to the “top to bottom” approach of being told what to wear, and has been so wired into new avenues and subcultures that the idea of being in the front row of a traditional catwalk holds very little appeal.

These consumers are already influencing the direction of fashion with their spending patterns, but when they become a larger part of the economic class, brands will need a completely different approach to target them – or to at least entice them into thinking that the brand represents them.

The people born post-Y2K bug fear are personifying and manifesting in what resembles, in its very early stage, Baudrillard’s “simulation and simulacra”. They are not capable of discerning between  the real and the representative of the real. For them, the object and its representative symbol are the same. What better object between a handbag or a smartphone, represents the current times? And in that blurry ground between the real and the hyper-real, what role will digital fashion play – either as a representation of physical products, or as its own category?

Technologically driven subcultures like gaming, cosplay, avatar creation, AR filters and many other are, for sure, still self-segregated and cliquish, but they are reaching escape velocity. It’s become routine, today, for fashion brands to be surprised by the emergence of cultural moments – and to find themselves scrabbling to produce new styles to respond to those sudden trends.

But this distance between traditional fashion and subcultures and movements is shrinking quickly. Consider how quickly “street culture” went from being frowned upon to setting the tone for the whole of the fashion industry. How long will it be until the same happens for other cultures that, right now, fashion looks down upon until they suddenly overtake the cultural conversation and the industry finds itself on the back foot?

When it comes to gaming, for example, the numbers speak for themselves. What started as a cottage industry created from the passion of a few hobbyist coders now captures 3.09 billion people “”, and is drawing the attention and the budgets of some of the biggest brands in the world. All it will take is one top fashion executive (likely someone who grew up with the medium) to recognise that this is where the new generation lives, and suddenly gaming might also start to dominate and lead the cultural conversation.

And this will have much deeper implications for fashion. In theory “dwell time” in interactive entertainment is far superior to any other digital platform, but crucially this sector also represents not just a completely new channel, but a fundamentally different model of fashion, with avatars whose clothing and accessories might matter as much as – if not more than – what their alter-egos wear in the real world.

This transition has slowly started this year, but I expect much more to come. And the tipping point will happen when brands begin to realise that selling digital fashion can be just as viable a business model as selling physical fashion – bringing together two business units and two models as a whole.

Conclusion: The Medium Is The Message

So what  can the fashion industry do to capitalize on the upcoming shift in perspective from a generation that has grown up with the digital and physical world intertwined?

The first step, which is one a good amount of brands are already taking, is to be present in the spaces these communities already occupy. The countless gaming activations by fashion brands in Fortnite, Roblox and the likes, are proof that the above is not a new concept or idea, and it is already being taken seriously by certain companies.

The second, and possibly the most important, is understanding how quickly cultural trends, lingo, and especially aesthetics can migrate between the two realms. All this has its roots in  common analysis of social media sentiments and trends, but the next stageis an entirely different way of thinking of what fashion represents, stands for, and the role it plays in the wider scheme of culture.

It’s also especially vital for brands and designers that are working and creating with 3D and DPC tools today, to understand that small steps taken now can translate into huge strides later on in the positioning of your brand optics, cultural cachet, andmarket stratification. I believe that transition, when it comes, will be both sudden and profound enough to lead to many brands being left behind – just as happened in the eCommerce shift – as well as elevating other brands, which are prepared enough to have digital products and digital workflows, to the top positions.

Last but not least, that there’s a real argument to be made for elevating the fashion experience into a hybrid space that falls between  traditional craftsmanship, artistry, and the dream-like, dystopian and utopian digital spaces that the next generation occupies.

As a brand, ask yourself what it will mean to be both realistic and artificial in a way that reflects the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of the current era, without deviating from the core of what your brand represents. The current activations with CGI out-of-home campaigns from Jacquemus and others are lighthouses in this area. AR activations have fast become the new standard. And hologram catwalks, where fully digital fashion enters official Fashion Weeks are another example of how this blending of channels speaks directly to a generation that sees the digital and the physical as equal parts of a whole.

For better or for worse, technology is and will be the predominant cultural movement of our time, and the most pressing question facing brands who are forward-thinking enough to be reading a report about digital product creation is  what the role of fashion will be in this brave new world. The market will dispose of the ones that don’t find an answer, by the law of demand and supply economics, which will be just as cut-throat in the blended digital / physical future as they are today.