Digital fashion is the creation, production and representation of fashion using computer-generated design and other digital technologies. It includes digital-only clothing and accessories, as well as digital representations of physical garments, and can be used in virtual worlds, video games, social media and augmented reality environments.
The field developed alongside advances in 3D garment simulation, e-commerce, virtual worlds and social media. Applications of digital fashion include digital garment design and prototyping, virtual try-on, clothing for avatars, digital twins of physical garments and digital-only fashion products. Academic research on the field has also examined consumer behaviour, identity, production methods and fashion supply chains. Design and production Digital technologies are used in fashion design to create and evaluate garments before physical production. Three-dimensional garment-design systems can combine digital pattern construction, cloth modeling and virtual simulation, allowing designers to assess elements such as garment shape, drape and fit using digital prototypes. These tools are also used to create garments intended entirely for digital environments.
During the late 2010s and early 2020s, digital fashion companies including Tribute Brand, The Fabricant, Auroboros and RTFKT developed businesses focused on virtual clothing and other digital fashion products.
Marketing, distribution, and sales Digital fashion technologies are used in online retail to support product visualization and purchasing decisions. Virtual fitting rooms and augmented-reality try-on systems allow consumers to view garments on their bodies or digital representations before purchase and can provide information about characteristics such as appearance, size and fit. Research on virtual try-on has examined its effects on product evaluation, consumer attitudes and purchase intentions. Virtual dressing room A virtual dressing room, also known as a virtual fitting room, allows consumers to visualize clothing on themselves or a digital representation without physically trying on the garment. Such systems use technologies including augmented-reality, body tracking and garment simulation, and may also provide information about size and fit.
In May 2011, Topshop tested a Kinect-based augmented-reality fitting room at its flagship store in Moscow. Developed by AR Door, the system tracked the user's body and superimposed three-dimensional dress models onto an on-screen image. Research on virtual fitting rooms has produced mixed findings about their effectiveness, and studies have continued to examine how accurately they support garment size selection.
Fashion recommender systems Fashion recommender systems use artificial intelligence techniques, including computer vision and deep learning, to suggest garments or outfits based on factors such as visual characteristics, user preferences and contextual information. Research in this area includes item retrieval, complementary item recommendation, whole-outfit recommendation and wardrobe recommendation. Some systems also incorporate information about a user's existing wardrobe and contextual factors such as weather or occasion.
Social media and co-creation Social media enables fashion brands and consumers to interact through online communities, participatory marketing and user-generated content. Research on online fashion retail has examined these interactions as forms of value co-creation, in which consumers participate in activities associated with brands and other consumers. Studies of luxury fashion marketing have also examined how social media allows users to create and circulate visual content connected with branded experiences.
Fashion brands have also used virtual influencers and computer-generated personalities in digital marketing campaigns. Figures such as Lil Miquela and Noonoouri have collaborated with luxury fashion brands and appeared in promotional content.
Virtual presentations During the COVID-19 pandemic, major fashion weeks adopted digital presentation formats. Milan Fashion Week held a digital edition in 2020, while the British Fashion Council launched a digital platform for London Fashion Week that included streamed presentations, interviews, designer content and virtual showrooms.
In June 2020, Balmain launched a virtual showroom for its cruise collection, hosted by a three-dimensional avatar of creative director Oliver Rousteing. In September 2020, International Digital Fashion Week launched as an online fashion event featuring more than 100 designers and fashion presentations from multiple countries.
For its Spring/Summer 2021 collection, Italian streetwear brand GCDS staged a digitally rendered fashion show featuring animated models and a virtual front row. Celebrity avatars including Dua Lipa and Anwar Hadid appeared among the digital audience. Fashion films were also used to present digitally created garments and virtual representations of models. For Mugler's Spring/Summer 2021 presentation, Bella Hadid underwent 3D scanning to create a digital avatar that appeared in the collection's fashion film.
In June 2021, digital fashion house Auroboros presented a digital-only ready-to-wear collection through London Fashion Week's DiscoveryLAB programme.
Fashion in video games Digital fashion is used in video games through avatar customization, player-created clothing and collaborations between fashion brands and game developers. Fashion companies have used games both to distribute virtual garments and to promote physical collections.In 2019, Moschino collaborated with The Sims on a capsule collection that included clothing inspired by the game and a virtual item made available within The Sims. Later that year, Louis Vuitton partnered with Riot Games to create character skins for League of Legends and a related physical collection. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Animal Crossing: New Horizons became a venue for user-created and brand-related virtual fashion; designers including Marc Jacobs and Valentino released garments for player avatars.
In 2020, Christian Louboutin presented its Spring/Summer 2021 collection through Zepeto, where users could create avatars and explore a virtual game environment featuring items from the collection.
NFT fashion and digital ownership Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have been used to represent ownership of digital fashion items through blockchain systems. NFT fashion differs from other forms of digital fashion by emphasizing attributes such as verifiable ownership, collectability and tradability, although the two categories can overlap.
In May 2019, The Fabricant, artist Johanna Jaskowska and Dapper Labs auctioned the digital garment Iridescence for US$9,500. Ownership was recorded on a blockchain, and the garment was digitally fitted to an image supplied by the buyer.
Digital fashion education and research Research on digital fashion communication has also developed through academic journals and conferences. Studies in Communication Sciences published a thematic section titled Fashion communication: Between tradition and digital transformation, and the 2019 FACTUM conference in Ascona, Switzerland, produced the Springer proceedings Fashion Communication in the Digital Age.
In 2020, Ravensbourne fashion and game-design students also collaborated on Rave Digital, a project that presented student designs on 3D avatars and was streamed through Twitch. Digital fashion has been incorporated into higher-education programmes in fashion and related disciplines. Ravensbourne University London introduced a Digital Technology for Fashion pathway within its BA Fashion programme in 2021. In 2021, the University for the Creative Arts launched an MA in Digital Fashion, described by The Guardian as the first UK master's course devoted to virtual couture.
Digital technologies have also been used to provide access to fashion heritage. Projects including Europeana Fashion and Google Arts & Culture's We Wear Culture have made digitized fashion collections and related cultural material available online.Noris, A., & Cantoni, L. (29 Aug. 2022). Digital Fashion Communication. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004523555 Research has also examined the social and political claims associated with digital fashion. A 2025 study by YeSeung Lee found that online digital-fashion discussions often relied on superficial slogans and tended to reinforce established fashion hierarchies rather than challenge them.
Sustainability Digital fashion has been discussed as a way to reduce some environmental impacts associated with physical fashion, including material use in sampling, overproduction and travel associated with fashion events. However, digital fashion also depends on computing infrastructure, including data centres, cloud storage, hardware and, in some applications, blockchain systems, which themselves have environmental costs. References