Today’s fashion industry is not an easy place for fashion designers who like to experiment. If you want to earn money, you have to design for the general public – and it is precisely this general public that is primarily interested in clothing that conforms to the existing conventions. These conventions exist in the form of trends and dress codes, but are often also simply practical: after all, it is easier to go shopping on a bike in jeans than in an extravagant creation with fluttering layering or cutouts.
Over the years, however, a new space has opened up in which anything seems possible: cyberspace. The same social rules or practical considerations apply here as in real life. That makes the virtual world a place for experimental design, says designer Shayli Harrison. Harrison graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp in 2018. She recently founded the Mutani (pronounced: Mútani) company. “Cyberspace is where creative work can be of real value,” she says.
Between creativity and commerce
Deconstructed items of clothing, gigantic sleeves made of brightly colored, shiny fabrics, fabulous lip jewelry and mesmerizing prints – Harrison’s graduation collection with the title “Crimes Against Nature” blew all imaginations. In the past, the Antwerp Academy has often produced radical designers who work as an avant-garde on the limits of fashion and art. “We don’t come as designers: from the academy, but as creative directors: from within, as people with an artistic vision,” says Harrison. “At the academy you mostly look at illustrations, books and art. You model and draw, and then you turn those ideas into clothes. “
Finding a place in the commercial fashion industry is often a challenge for these types of fashion professionals. Harrison explains: “The freer you are in your creativity, the more likely it is that you will end up in a kind of limbo between art and fashion. You serve as a source of inspiration for many other creatives and brands, but you don’t get employed anywhere. ”During the years during and after her apprenticeship, Harrison got to know other dark sides of the industry. “The mass production, the waste, the poor working conditions … I decided: this is not the place for me.”
From the digital village to the metaverse
It was no accident that Harrison ended up in the world of digital fashion. During her studies, she developed a virtual reality experience that she presented at the academy. After graduation, she was asked by the Z33 art center in Hasselt, Belgium to work with a small team of digital artists on a VR art project. “We designed an interior made of textiles with virtual creatures running through it. You could see them with VR glasses hanging from the ceiling. That gave me an idea of where I wanted to develop. “
At the same time a call for the ‘Digital Village’ was published, a project by Evelyn Mora, who is also behind the virtual Helsinki Fashion Week. This digital village is actually a huge “multiplayer metaverse” with opportunities for surfing, gaming and social interaction. The Digital Village also provides a stage for digital designers who can sell their designs through a marketplace. Harrison applied her portfolio to Digital Village’s open call and was successful. Since November last year she has been working with a team of twelve experts from the fields of animation, sculpture and sound on the two-minute film “Fear the Foli-age”, which is due to be released shortly as part of the launch of Digital Village. The imaginative film characters and their extreme outfits designed by Harrison are based on extinct flower species such as the lapwing and the blue holly.
During the project, Harrison learned that she could sell her digital designs and avatars on the Digital Village online marketplace in the form of NFTs, short for non-fungible tokens. “I first had to find out what that meant. I had heard of it, but what could I do with it? “
The term NFTs is still a mystery to many. In short, non-fungible tokens are virtual, non-exchangeable proof of ownership for digital items. These can be, for example, avatars or digital outfits that can be used in games, but also virtual works of art or pieces of music. The NFTs are stored in a blockchain system that records who owns something and where sales transactions are registered. NFTs can be bought with cryptocurrencies such as bitcoins, but also with US dollars or euros. While NFTs are not yet that widespread trading, some are already investing heavily in them. The first NFT dress, designed by the Dutch company The Fabricant, was sold in 2019 for the equivalent of 8,120 euros.
Longing for beautiful things
The market for NFTs is currently growing rapidly. NFT Merchants: In addition to responding to the increasing use of the Internet by people, fashion professionals like Harrison anticipate the developments it will go through. “The deeper I got into the subject, the more I realized that a lot revolves around the ‘Web3’,” says Harrison. “This is basically a future perspective for the Internet in the form of a metaverse, a virtual world that is created by game developers and not by programmers and in which everything is visual.” In Web3, an important role is reserved for avatars, with which one can move through the metaverse. This avatar can be styled, just like in games like The Sims, Animal Crossing, and Fortnite.
Some big fashion brands are already venturing into cyberspace, especially the gaming world. These brands mostly offer digital versions of existing looks. Harrison thinks it’s boring: “I don’t want to walk around in a game in a crop top and leggings. The design must serve the purpose of the game world, which is to explore our imaginations. ”
Harrison sees the game world and the metaverse as a “safe space” in which people can freely experiment with shapes and identities and have fun with fashion, far removed from the conventions of everyday life. “I sometimes have the feeling that fashion has lost the fun factor a little. There is a longing for theatrics, for strange and wonderful things. Fashion has become so rigid. The gaming world is the opposite of that. This is where my work can really be of value. “
The ‘Antwerp Cyber Six’
Harrison also wants to offer other fashion professionals an opportunity to unleash their creativity and benefit from the revenue model that digital design offers. “Designers: who develop their work digitally, can sell it online. That could also give them the financial leeway to continue to shape in the real world. However, digitization requires specific knowledge and skills and is anything but natural for most fashion professionals, ”says Harrison. “There are many designers whose work is very well suited for the Metaverse, but who do not understand the technology behind it.”
That’s what Mutani is for. The company brings radical creatives together with tech-savvy people to design digital fashion “that encourages gamers to explore raw forms of self-expression in games and in the metaverse.” The designs developed in this way are sold on blockchain platforms, with the Profits will be shared equally among the contributors. The idea is that the financial and creative freedom that digital fashion offers will ultimately lead to more space for fashion experimentation in the physical world.
Three avatars from “Fear the Foli-age” have already been released under the name Mutani, as have a number of digital versions of spectacular jewelry from Harrison’s graduation collection. Harrison is currently working on a test for Mutani’s work process under the name ‘Antwerp Cyber Six’, a playful derivative of the Antwerp Six. The plan is to invite six graduates from the Antwerp Academy to go through the digitization steps with Mutani. To do this, Harrison scours the Academy’s archives for theses with potential for the Metaverse. “We’re looking at whose work fits the gaming fantasy best. It has nothing to do with fashion or trends, but with the ability to build a story around a character. ”
In the future, Mutani will become the starting point for the most unusual fashion in the cyber scene, the place for the most daring digital designs. In fact, this future is speculative, as Harrison observes: “There are many startups that have dedicated themselves to the Web3, but no one really knows exactly how it will look and work. It takes time to find out. This time should be better used. “
This article was previously published on FashionUnited.nl. Translation and editing: Barbara Russ