Tracing the History of Digital Fashion

Abstract

This article provides the short and non-linear history of digital fashion, arguing that it is entangled with the development of digital environments and virtual worlds. Unlike material clothes, digital fashion end products are created digitally, for digital use. Digital fashion can range from digital skins for gamified environments or virtual influencers to superimposed images, Augmented Reality filters, Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), and digital twins or phygital fashion. We trace the emergence and development of digital fashion through pivotal themes: from its relation to virtual worlds, the Internet, and e-commerce, to the implementation of avatars and fashion in videogames, to the commercially led digital fashion industry that has emerged in the past few years in what is called Web 3.0, and finally, we look at the recent surge of interest in artificial intelligence and its potential complications for digital fashion.