What is Phygital Fashion?

Fashion is not merely apparel or accessories, it is the broader motif representing culture, paradigms and the spitting image of the ideologies an individual holds. Historically, it has flowed into multiple streams with designers as well as the wearers depicting everything from dissent to celebration through their dresses, make-up or clothing as if becoming silent metaphors themselves.
In this century, the world is progressing towards a new way of perceiving the traditional form of fashion, that is, phygital fashion. The term digital fashion has been making rounds in the market but to bridge the gaps and leverage a hundred percent of the resources, interactive fashion through tangible and virtual means is the need of the hour.

The consumers evermore on Web3 are inclined to live hybrid lives whether it be through their smart phones, the mixed realities or the metaverse. To cater and evolve in the wake of this transformatory tide, the likes of AR fashion and VR fashion are the innovation demanded.

What is Phygital Fashion? How did the seed grow into a tree?

The word innovation has always been synonymous to fashion. Whether in Hussein Chalayan’s "Remote Control Dress" at the Paris Fashion Week in the year 2000 or Alexander McQueen's 2010 "Plato's Atlantis" collection with integrated LED lights, the potential for fashion to be interactive and personalised by integrating omni-forms has always been there. With the boom in e-commerce spaces and the internet in the past decade, the production and retail in the fashion industry has seen a shift.

With the possibility to browse and buy fashion apparel from the tip of your fingers, the fashion scene quickly drifted towards personalized fashion. The integration of phygital technology by adapting AR, VR and metaverse ecosystem has created new ways of approaching fashion for both consumers, designers and brands.

What is Phygital Fashion? The Building Blocks.

• The integration of AR with brick-and-mortar stores and conventional retail makes it feasible for people to experience features such as virtual-try ons.
  

• The metaverse, blockchain and VR have paved gateways into a virtual medium of marketing and consumption. Virtual stores, runway shows, NFT wearables and virtual prototyping has given the production process of fashion a fresh perspective that is also easy on the environment.
  

• Another innovation of the phygital fashion are smart fabrics or e-textiles, that incorporate advanced materials to provide enhanced functionalities.
  

What is Phygital Fashion? Multifaceted Advantages.

The omnichannel and cross-platform visibility of brands and their catalogues increases consumer engagement and interaction. The consumers are able to access fashion at their own terms and ease whether online or in-store.

Phygital fashion is also a good grievance for the sustainability concerns and the environmental impact. The garments are connected to their NFTs as digital twins for consumers to access every step in the supply chain.

This is good for the product’s authenticity and longevity. The circular system created enables tracing back the apparel and creates ways to reuse and recycle. The advent of phygital fashion could help bring down the waste produced by the fashion industries. 

What is Phygital Fashion? Contemporary Examples.

• Leading fashion brands like Gucci have incorporated AR into their phygital strategy to provide a sit-home trial facility.
  
• NFT collectibles and wearables have been leveraged by brands like Adidas and G-Shock.
  
• Meta Humans and AI-Generated content has been mixed to bring out the true capabilities of fashion by brands like Prada.
  
• Digital elements have been directly incorporated into apparel as well through NFCs and smart wear.

What is Phygital Fashion? Conclusion.

The personalized experiences and the omnichannel presence that phygital fashion brings to the table will only continue to grow with time. With increase in users of Web3, the world is on the pathway to phygital.

As Metaverse influences the consumer experiences, the fashion scene will continue to discover newer ways to reach out to the people in a process compassionate towards the environment as well.