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Video picks: The New Order: Digi-Gal x Selfridges
- Written byKirsty Gentle
- Published date 17 September 2019
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Meet Digi-Gal’s contribution to Selfridge’s ‘The New Order’ campaign where 3D digital design and fashion combine to create otherworldly visuals.
Innovative brands and retail stores are embracing technological advances to create virtual campaigns, window displays and even digital collections in order to compete in a world entangled with ecological challenges.
Textiles graduate Cat Taylor founded Digi-Gal to bring together ‘a global community of trans and non-binary 3D animators and designers’. Their first collaborative project features garments from the store’s AW 19 collection strutting through unearthly environments alone without the model’s bodies. With innovation like this how long will it be before catwalk shows and shop windows take on this medium more widely?
The New Order
Video: The New Order: Digi-Gal x Selfridges – Ready to Wear AW 19
Director + 3D Garment Animator: @cattytay
Producer + Editor @jocelyn_anquetil
3D Designer: @alexa_sirbu
3D Designer: @Stephyfungdesign
3D Designer: @christina_worner
Assisting Designer: @Laura.subirats
3D Garment Designer: @3dressmaker
Sound Design: @sebruen
Want to see more?
Scroll down on Selfridges ‘Meet the artist’ feature to see Digi-Gal’s 3D digital designs featured in window displays
Head to Selfridge's ‘Experience the digital revolution’ to explore ‘8 ways to experience the digital revolution’
This is not the first time Cat has created such disarming visuals. Browse her Vimeo or search elsewhere online and you’ll find similar clips she has created for sports brands and fashion house Balenciaga, including a looped clip (part of Balenciaga’s Loops Video YouTube series) featuring pieces from their collection set to a curated soundtrack.
So how did a textiles student turn her hand to 3D fashion design? At a crucial point in her final year project Cat taught herself how to use 3D software. It was a risk that paid off. Her knowledge of textiles and pattern cutting meant she understood how materials behave when they come in contact with skin; so she could visualise how to animate garments virtually. For the Selfridges campaign the Digi-Gal team studied the garments in depth on and off the model in order to create the most realistic version for this campaign. As you can imagine, the process of recreating these garments was painstaking; but Digi-Gal was keen to ensure that, “the campaign highlighted the artistry found in each designer garment”.
Beyond the intriguing visuals which create a different type of engagement for shoppers, using 3D virtual design could be a serious plus for the planet, redefining what ‘fast fashion’ could mean in the future. Cat says,
“3D software provides designers with the ability to design, sample, customise and produce a virtual garment that can be sold online the very same day, without the need to be physically created. This makes a sustainable ‘made-to-sell’ model where nothing is wasted entirely possible.”
