Closing the Looop

H&M enters Roblox, RPM x Digital Fashion Week, and On-Demand Garment Production

Author

Randy Ginsburg
January 10, 2023

Greetings digital fashion friends,

I want to kick today off with a beautiful digital garment from Jon Sanchez. I'm always a sucker for earth tones, but damnnn this is fire.

We're currently sitting pretty at 79 subscribers and I'd love to get to 100 by the end of the month. So... if you've enjoyed the newsletter so far, care to share it on social or with a friend?

It goes a long way.

And if you're that lucky friend, click the big pretty purple button below so you don't miss out.

Thank you 🫡

♻️H&M Joins the Roblox Train

In October 2020, H&M launched its 'Looop' recycling program, a garment-to-garment system that transforms unwanted garments into new products. All without water or extra chemicals.

Now, it's bringing Looop to the virtual world, with the launch of the 'Loooptopia Experience' on Roblox. Set in the center of H&M’s virtual city square, digitally-native consumers can explore three alternate worlds – Rainbooow Fields, Neon Studiooo, and Fabric Fooorest. 'Loooptopia Experience' on Roblox.

The goal? Participate in various mini-games, styling sessions, and other tasks to gather virtual materials and patterns and create custom digital garments. From there, users can then style their avatar with their own created garments, further adding accessories, dances, and music tracks to stage their own runway shows.

With an emphasis on circularity, users can also trade clothes with friends or recycle old clothes to earn "super-rare elements."

Is it a cool idea? Yes.

Will anyone use it? Only time will tell.

I'm much more excited about the physical 'Looop' program, which I hope to soon see rolled out to locations around the globe.

👚Phygital Fashion On-Demand

The Digital Fashion Group co-founder Leslie Holden penned a fantastic article for The Interline about the blurring of the lines between physical and digital processes, and the role of phygital fashion in circularity and sustainability.

Here's an interesting snippet:

Digital Product Creation (DPC) and digital selling can ensure that garments only require manufacturing once they are sold, so the money comes up-front. This means the traditional ‘push system’ (stock model) is transformed into a ‘pull system’ (stockless model) of just-in-time, on-demand, made-to-order manufacturing, ensuring a sustainable approach and a positive working capital process.

PlatformE co-founder and CEO, Gonçalo Cruz believes that, to achieve an on-demand pull system, brands (as well as manufacturers) need to work with 3D software for real-time feedback and communication. Apart from training their design team to use the software, brands will also need to onboard their manufacturers and partners to ensure interoperability throughout their supply and value chain(s).

PlatformE works with each brand to digitize collections and support the brand in the process of selling the digital assets and producing garments on-demand. Their technology has been developed in order to connect the 3D asset at the point of sale, meaning they can also offer brands opportunities for customization/personalization which enables the customer to experience the creative process of selecting details, colours or patterns.

💃 Digital Fashion Week is Back!

Digital Fashion Week is slated for February 9-14, 2023 in NYC and London. Top designers Lorena Bello Avila, Ilona Song, Mike Flores, Erika Wang, and Evard Nielsen are teaming up with Ready Player Me to create an exclusive drop of gala-ready outfits to wear in the metaverse shows.

💻 An Interview with Kevin Tung

Kevin was one of the first people I met in the digital fashion world and I'm constantly in awe of his work. Especially this new SpaceX-inspired piece.

You can read the full interview here.

👾 Pixels and Threads:

Thanks for reading,

Randy