A Response to Fast Fashion Waste & Representation Gaps

I'm Ananya, a digital fashion designer who prioritizes understanding the origins and purpose behind each garment over merely following trends or focusing on aesthetics. For me, creating something without a deeper meaning or purpose feels empty. Sustainability is the driving force behind my design processes, which naturally led me to explore digital fashion for my master's degree. In this submission, I will showcase two of the projects I have worked on so far.

For my most recent project, I created a junkpile hoodie depicting the piles of fast fashion waste that end up in landfills. We had the opportunity to work on a industry project with the Fabricant, focusing on customisation. So I created several variations in textures, material and colour for the user to choose from.

Included below are my mood and texture boards, along with garment design inspirations. I utilized AI to generate images that served as initial inspiration.

The texture variations for the hoodie are inspired by incinerated, weathered, and dust-covered garments, symbolizing the stages that garment waste undergoes in landfills. Each colour variation is named after landfills and waste markets where fashion waste ultimately ends up.

Renders of the junkpile hoodie in substance painter:

1st row: Incinerated & burnt texture of hoodie in cool & pastel tones

2nd row: Dust, dirt & stained texture of hoodie in warm tone

3rd row: Weathered (moss & mould) texture of hoodie in warm tone

Attached below is a recording of my design process of the hoodie from creating the silhouette to texturing. I made the base of the hoodie using Clo3D and textured it in Adobe 3D Substance Painter.

Here is an interactive 3D model of my hoodie on Sketchfab, featuring the weathered texture with cool tone variations.

Renders of the Junkpile Hoodie in Unreal Engine:

I created an environment in Unreal Engine for viewing the outfit, designed to evoke a sense of floating tranquility in an improved world. This environment offers three different lighting variations for users to choose from.

1st row: Incinerated & burnt texture of hoodie in cool, warn & pastel tones in a red dawn environment

2nd row: Dust, dirt & stained texture of hoodie in cool, warn & pastel tones in a cosmo sunset environment

3rd row: Weathered (moss & mould) texture of hoodie in cool, warn & pastel tones in a starry night environment

Here is a 360° video of the Junkpile Hoodie in a starry night environment, showcasing the weathered texture in warm tone variations.

For my first project in digital fashion, I focused on the lack of representation in gaming skins and clothing. I created an interface showcasing the use of hyper-personalization to address representation in skins for avatars in the gaming industry and the metaverse. Two of the main aspects I factored in were culture and disability.

I designed two sets of outfits for personas John and Sanaya, with varying cultural backgrounds and disabilities.

I created the outfits using Clo3D and Marvelous Designer, and textured them in Adobe 3D Substance Painter. Then, I brought the designs into Unreal Engine, where I created a game-like background to serve as an interface for gamers to choose their character outfits. The avatars for John and Sanaya were created using Metahuman Creator. Additionally, I incorporated plus-size digital fashion for John's character to enhance representation.

John is Chinese and has missing fingers on one hand, while Sanaya is Indian and, after an unfortunate surgery, lost her right leg and requires a back brace.

For John, I created a glove prosthetic personalized to his needs and style in carbon fibre. For Sanaya, I designed a back brace in carbon fibre and a prosthetic leg in brass material. These are digital fashion pieces that could also potentially serve as prototypes for physical counterparts.

Here is the interface I crafted using Figma for John's journey in creating his hyper-personalized gaming skins.

With my experience in producing sustainable physical collections and digital collections with a purpose, I aim to leverage digital fashion and AI to develop targeted sustainable solutions. Currently, I'm exploring the potential usage of digital fashion in upcycling for my upcoming graduation project.