Fashion and game design as hybrid practices: approaches in education to creating fashion-related experiences in digital worlds

Abstract

Collaborations between fashion and digital game design practitioners are intended to provide new fashion-related experiences in digital worlds, yet often result in garment designs that resemble physical equivalents rather than constituting innovative experiences. This research aimed to investigate possible criteria for developing digital design practices in higher education in fashion design that are informed by industry experts’ experiences of fashion and digital game design. Specialists from both industries were interviewed to investigate how fashion design practices can create meaningful content for digital worlds. The findings suggest that fashion design practitioners in higher-education need to better understand the technical and socio-dynamic peculiarities of digital worlds to create meaningful fashion-related outcomes, rather than recreating physical fashion in the digital realm. The findings further suggest that fashion designers would benefit from learning about digital software, tools, and methods that are shared by digital-native design disciplines to allow for connected workflows.