What comes to mind when you think of digital fashion? AR filter? Clothes for avatars? Skins for games? Digital fashion is all of that and could also help us to have a fairer and more sustainable fashion system. And not just in the production phase, but also in reducing waste in samples and at the end of a product’s life. Sustainable practices can be adopted by digital fashion designers to ensure a better production process, from creation to clientele.
An important approach for a brand to include sustainability in its calculations is to apply the Sustainable Development Goals. Developed by the United Nations, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are an action plan for people, planet and prosperity. They should ensure more transparency and accountability. These 17 goals aim to end poverty, protect the environment and ensure prosperity for all people.
To discuss how the SDGs can make the fashion system more sustainable, we invited five digital fashion and sustainable business experts to share their thoughts, plans and projects with us. All five have different backgrounds but a common goal: a sustainable economy.
This article is a collaboration between Digital Fashion Group Academy and FashionUnited, written by Lívia Pinent, Digital Professor for Research at Digital Fashion Group Academy.
What do the SDGs, the Sustainable Development Goals, mean for the fashion industry?
“Every time I give a talk on the SDGs, it seems like the statistics are getting worse,” says Merunisha Moonilal, academic, consultant and digital professor of circular economy at TDFG Academy. Of the 17 global goals, the UN has specifically urged the fashion industry to embrace four key goals:
For example, Moonilal explains that SDG 4 is about enabling inclusive education at all levels. For the fashion industry, this means closing the gender gap, where statistically more boys than girls attend school, but where 80 percent of the fashion industry’s supply or value chain is made up of women. SDG 9 is about making sure that, despite rapid technological progress, human work is not replaced by automation. It is also about not disenfranchising the workforce, but training them for more qualified positions so that future generations can also work with these technologies.
“Human rights violations are unfortunately the order of the day in clothing manufacturing. Issues of gender, class and ethnic diversity in leadership are still pervasive, not to mention the toxin destruction of our natural environment and resources. Nonetheless, the apparel and textile industry is a fundamental economic backbone of our global economy and it is important that the fashion industry as a whole embraces the SDGs on its own. The integration of the SDGs is of great importance to transform the linear into a circular supply chain,” explains Moonilal.
What is the circular mode system?
“The essence of the circular fashion system is that waste is avoided. And we’re moving towards that by trying to use resources that we already have, so we don’t need to use new resources or produce in the first place,” explains Alexia Planas Lee, founding partner and head of Impact Design and Innovation at Circular Fashion Summit by Lablaco.
The circular economy expert also explains that “there are three stages of a garment where improvements can be made: materials, process and consumption. In the case of digital fashion, we can see how, at the material level, it helps with the choice of materials. There are companies that create excellent renderings of materials so you no longer have to send samples. Sample pieces that go to waste for every single brand or fashion designer who works with them.”
“Technology like the IoT (Internet of Things) allows us to follow the journey of a garment from start to finish. This way, consumers can understand the entire journey of that garment and the brand can follow them. For example, a few months ago we introduced an IoT rental system with H&M in their store in Berlin. This allowed people to track their products,” says Planas Lee.
The potential of digital fashion for a sustainable system
For Evelyn Mora, CEO & co-founder of Digital Village, we as an industry still think too small when it comes to the potential of digital fashion for a sustainable system: “We need to think on a large, global scale about how digital fashion actually affects physical fashion can affect. I don’t think you can replace the physical fashion industry, which is an $800 billion industry, with digital fashion. But I believe that consumption and our relationship with clothes, the way we express ourselves, can be influenced by digital fashion.
And she adds: “The fashion industry is about selling dreams and identities. It’s about so much more than just clothing. And I don’t think any fashion brand has thought this through and is using digital technology in a way that is changing our physical consumption habits.” Mora believes fashion brands and companies still have a lot of work to do. The supply chain needs to be involved, transparency should be enforced through the traceability of NFTs and we also need to ensure everyone working in the industry is paid fairly.
“It is a fact that digital fashion has not yet made significant impacts and results that make fashion more sustainable. will this happen For sure. That’s a bigger picture, a long-term task that we’re working on right now,” concludes Mora.
For Olga Chernysheva, Chief Officer Sustainability at Dressx, digital fashion is already having an impact on how products are made and consumed. As an example, she cites a project in partnership between Dressx and Farfetch to reduce the carbon footprint through on-demand production: “Before we talked about how digital fashion can be replaced by physical fashion for everyday consumption , we have cooperated with the brand. We designed an all-digital capsule collection and made all marketing digital. Influencers were clothed digitally, nothing was produced. And right after the campaign, Farfetch collected the orders and the physical garments were produced on demand. For the 40 garments made for this capsule collection, we saved 2.5 tons of carbon.”
To get a sense of scale, the carbon footprint of a digital garment is only 3 percent of a traditionally made cotton t-shirt. This carbon footprint calculation is based on a study published by Dressx in 2020 and the methodology can be found on their website. There is also a study published by Evelyn Mora for Digital Village in August 2020 on digital fashion’s carbon emissions and their impact on sustainability, with some counterpoints that add to the relevance and complexity of the topic.
Design as a sustainable and empathetic process
For Roei Derhi, Founder and Creative Director of Placebo Digital Fashion House, “Fashion is about identity. And when we talk about the SDGs, when we talk about sustainability, a lot of people talk about how that affects the environment. For us at Placebo, sustainability is how we define people in the 21st century. What kind of people we want to be. Sustainability is empathy, is how the world gets so small and how we create empathy, with no physical borders between countries and all the outcomes of the SDGs: gender equality, empathy for other people.”
“Digital fashion hasn’t exploded because it’s a new way of thinking about fashion or about sustainability. But because people are looking for escapism. People are looking for a definition of themselves and fashion is about identity,” says Derhi. “And as designers, we should be responsible to ourselves, our clientele and our society when it comes to how we plan to offer that escapism. The creative design process should start from an empathetic perspective and incorporate social and environmental sustainability concerns.”
We all know that the fashion industry is still a long way from reaching the Sustainable Development Goals. But various initiatives can lead to a more sustainable system. Environmental policy, circular economy, digital design, digitization of the production process, recycling, repairing and reusing and raising awareness among people – all of these must go hand in hand. There is no easy way and there is no one ingenious solution. It’s a team effort and everyone has to do their part.
This article is based on the webinar “Digital Design & Sustainable Futures: The Goals” hosted by the Digital Fashion Group Academy.
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This article was previously published on FashionUnited.uk. Translation and editing: Barbara Russ.