Hyper-Real Digital Fashion at The Fabricant, with Kerry Murphy and Amber Jae Slooten

Hey and welcome to another episode of Fashion Made. Today I'm sitting down with two people. I have Carey Murphy and I have Amber J. Slotin from The Fabricant, and they are coming to us live from Amsterdam. That's right, in Netherlands, if you didn't know where that is. Guys, welcome to Fashion Made.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, it's a pleasure.

Today we're talking about the The Fabricant and 3D within the industry, the incredible pace of development of these tools, and as a sort of reasonably new startup, I would say, The Fabricant are doing some really cool stuff. So I guess you have a couple of different arms to the business.

That's correct. So basically the way we brand ourselves at the moment is that we like to call ourselves the world's first digital fashion house and digital fashion brand. Basically, how we started out as was just making digital fashion visualizations. So really bringing fashion into the 3D realm where we try to create experiences and visualizations that we like to call hyperreal. So basically, it's— there's a layer of photorealism to it, but we add the hyperrealism by adding some type of layer or element to it that when you're watching it, you actually know that it's not real, you know it's 3D. So for example, like the stuff on our website, you know, there's a running garment, but there's nobody in it. So it's just like a ghost garment running around. So that's kind of where we started out as, those were kind of some of our first tests, and seeing the amount of kind of interest and curiosity that we got through that. Kind of made us start The Fabricant beginning of this year. So basically, 1st of January, I told myself, this is something I want to do full-time, and I've been developing it full-time since. And now we're together with Amber being one of the co-founders, and together with another person, Kevin, who's the third co-founder, and he's like our, let's say, 3D technologist.

Okay. Did he come from another company?

Yeah, so because I have a background in film production and animation, So I was freelancing in the advertising world for about 10 years, and I knew Kevin. He was one of my collaborators in the freelance world, and we had been talking about this for quite a long time. It was actually the collaboration with him at first that we really created the technical side of it, and now together with Amber, we're really creating the creative side of it. And I feel like the— like we are the core team, us three. And it's just a combination of us three, you know, Amber being the fashion design who has a true interest in 3D design, and Kevin being the technical side who really has a true interest in fashion design, and me just kind of being in the middle of it all kind of creates the core team of The Fabricant, and I think that's kind of our strength as well of just, you know, three kind of unique characters coming together to create something new and trying to envision something new.

Yeah. Absolutely. Well, it's an industry that has some big players in it, so hopefully you guys can add that sort of unique, intimate mindset towards it. Amber, you come at it from a design standpoint, that's correct? Yeah.

Yeah. So I've been schooled as a traditional fashion designer. So, yeah, I've learned everything from paper patterns and all of the things of how to design, sketch, and everything the traditional way. But during my studies, I realized that it was very wasteful and that I wanted to see how I can design without wasting so much or without, or maybe in a new way using technology. And then I came across this 3D virtual prototyping software. And ever since then, I've just completely fallen in love with the fact that I can create garments without wasting anything and just this incredible visualization of fabric. Endless fabric as well, because you never run out of fabric in a digital space. When I was still sewing garments, I would run out of fabric in the middle of the night, and I could not finish my garments in school. And to me, this was such a freedom, the fact that I could have endless materials, and also I can really decide on what material I'm using. So in a way, this digital design was for me like the answer that I was looking for. And I have the feeling that it's the answer for a lot of things in the industry because we're really struggling with overproduction and samples that have to be sent all, all around the world. And to me, it's very important that we think about the future. And in this sense, using 3D technology, I think we're gonna get a lot of new ways of dealing with clothes and how we can better be sustainable for the industry.

I couldn't agree more. Was it hard making the transition from traditional design to using these 3D tools, which obviously, you know, you're kind of designing with a mouse and keyboard now?

Yeah, yeah. You know, to me it felt very natural because I've always been interested in like digital space, so I've also always worked with Photoshop, Illustrator, and the funny thing was I felt very limited by the fact that I always had to cut out of the fabric and then I had to sew it together and then I could see what my design looked like. While in 3D space, I was able to see kind of immediately what I was doing and I could immediately change something. So if I wanted my skirt to be shorter, I could shorten it immediately. Or if, and if I didn't like it, you know, you know, in real life, if you cut it off, it's cut and you cannot, you know, you can sew it back on, but it takes a lot of time. And in digital space, you just hit Ctrl+Z. It's just as simple as that. So it's so nice because it's so intuitive and you go back and forth. Maybe you have a previous version you like much better. Like it's so intuitive because you take pieces of fabric, throw them around the body and To me, it felt like much more freedom, even though it's using a mouse. And this mouse thing is also just something for now, but I believe that in the future computing will be that you will— you can just touch it with your hands, you know. It's not that far away that technology is going to be so good that you can basically work with your hands in digital space, you know, with VR upcoming. There's so many new developments in that. So in a sense, to me it was a development that came naturally, and I think if you get used to it, that it's really not as bad as it seems to be working with a mouse.

Yeah, I guess there'll be new developments in the hardware now, as much like the software has got so far.

Yeah.

But we're still using the same keyboard and the same mouse that we've been using for 50, 60 years in computing.

Exactly.

So that side of things really needs to bump up a little bit, doesn't it?

Yes, definitely. And I believe it will. I mean, we have VR coming up and I think there's a lot of things busy. But yeah, I really hope that we can get rid of the keyboard and mouse. Yeah.

Cary, you've come from the film production industry where obviously the hardware is a little bit more advanced and certainly the software has been being used for, for decades, right? In terms of this virtual animation of drape and textiles and things like this. I mean, tell me a little bit more about how far behind the fashion industry has been behind the film industry in this regard.

Well, I don't know if it's really behind, because let's say 3D design software, essentially, it's like since the beginning of '90s, there's been a lot of development in the software. But one thing that was always lacking is kind of the clothing. We call it clothing simulation. And so actually, the reason why I got so excited about this whole initiative was because I saw that fashion industry had brought out this new software. Well, Marvelous Designer, which is more for gaming industry, and Clo3D, which is more for fashion industry. The fashion simulation properties and capabilities of those software were far better than the 3D software that I usually use for my own work. So, like, seeing what was happening there, you know, of course the 3D software, the 3D fashion software is behind on every single other aspect except for the fashion design and simulation aspect. But so we started kind of looking into, can we actually take the capabilities of the 3D fashion software and implement it into our own workflow? Where, you know, using the visual effects tools that we use, using the motion graphics and 3D tools. And just after a few months of testing things out and just creating our own pipeline for workflow, we were able to integrate it seamlessly and it was super fast. If anything, it actually accelerated our workflow and that allowed us to actually start making these type of visualizations and start enabled us to actually create our own tools as well from the 3D software. So like just creating simple tools was able us to take it much, much further than the capabilities of the fashion software. And the fashion— the capabilities of the fashion software allowed us to take it much further in our own 3D software. So it's just a clever combination of a few different softwares that kind of really elevates the level and and just, yeah, makes us be excited about our own results every single day. Because what essentially a simulation is, you know, it's the computer calculating the movement of the clothing itself, you know. So we just, we just set up a few different animations, hit simulate, wait a few hours, and then we have a, you know, moving clothing. And because of the intricacies, like the details of the clothing, we're surprised ourselves every single time that something comes up. I mean, of course, of course there's a lot of mistakes, you know, but those mistakes can be quite fun sometimes too.

Yeah.

Because that brings it again to like, let's say what I was saying before about this hyperrealism, you know, it's like there's just something weird happening that you didn't expect that just kind of shows you that it's still virtual. But those, they're like happy mistakes, you know, like something that also elevates our creativity in the process. Process.

Okay. How many external factors can you put into these situations, like wind, sunlight, shading, these sorts of things? Can you add all of these in to see how something changes?

Yeah, that's the beauty of it. It's just your imagination is your limitation when it comes down to it. You have all the wind, yeah, the lighting, you know, there's just so much things that goes into it that really it becomes like a creative playground where you're just creating a sculpture. For yourself. And like Amber was saying, because it's all digital and 3D, you know, you can prototype ideas very, very fast. Yeah.

Okay.

You know, just when it comes down to motion, because essentially we're also designing for motion where we're designing clothing to move, you know, which is maybe something a little bit new that clothing was always designed just as a, you know, flat static piece. Well, now we've added the element of time into it, the fourth dimension. And that kind of allows us to think of clothing in a different perspective as well, which is really about how it drapes, how it moves.

Digital space is very nice because, you know, you can just set up everything you want. You know, there's no, absolutely no limitations to if you want the sun or if you want it to be inside or if you want, you know, fire, if you want whatever, you know, everything is possible. Which makes it also super creative on the side of making visuals, because normally you're limited to models, you're limited to a space, a physical space that you have to be in with the clothes. Right now, what's so interesting about the software is that you can basically do a photoshoot anywhere you want. Like if you want, you can even, you know, take, take a digital model to Mars. It's all possible, you know, like you're not limited anymore to, to a physical environment, which makes it super interesting. And especially with the developments of digital fashion models lately, um, I don't know if you heard of, of them.

It's like, uh, I've got it written down. I was really wanting to ask you about these. I can't remember her name.

Yeah, she's called Shudu.

Yes, of course. Yeah.

And, um, yeah, she was the world's first digital supermodel, which was just, uh, incredible because it Yeah, everybody was shocked by the fact that she was digital. And we really believe that that's going to be the future, that you can just fit the clothes that you make anywhere. You can use a model, you can create any type of situation that you want to show it in. And what we found so amazing about this is that the show that we created for the Deep collection is virtual and we displayed it in one week on three different locations throughout Europe, so in Paris, in Maastricht, and in Amsterdam. And it was all in one week. We didn't have to ship the collection anywhere. We didn't have any couriers coming by that can ruin the garments. We didn't have any models that had to wear them, but still people had the feeling that they wanted to buy it. So it kind of proves the point, like, does clothing actually need to be physical? Does it need to be real or does it only have to seem to be real? You know, it's like, where does it lead us? And it was very nice to see how everybody reacted to the fact that it was digital. Yeah.

Shudu is— her images are static, right? They're still, they're motionless.

There's, I think, 2 videos or something of her moving, but not too much. It's just like really Yeah, okay. Yeah.

Do you think— how far are we away from having someone like Shudu walk down a catwalk in front of us, or has it already happened?

Yeah, what we've did— what we've done with the Deep collection, it's, it's, it's— the model is very abstract. So what we used is an avatar that was silver and was like not human-like, because it's a very thin line between uncanny feeling. So uncanny is basically that it feels like alienated or weird, and an extra realism. So that's very close to each other. But I think that it's not so far away that we can see a model actually looking very real and walking towards us because it's almost there. Like we're, we're also pushing it ourselves. Yeah.

Yeah.

The creator of Shudu, he started his own digital supermodel agency now. So I think he has 3 models there. One of them is an alien as well, so it doesn't even have to be like real human figures. It can be anything. So that kind of has a fun aspect. But let's say when it comes down to the, you know, the real professional use in the industry as well, I mean, of course, I don't think digital catwalks are so far away, or virtual catwalks, you know, like doesn't need to be, you know, real models anymore. What's the real difference anyways? Like, you're never gonna meet this person anyway, so whether it's digital or real does not matter.

Yeah, I mean, look at the movie industry. I mean, there's already actors playing roles who don't exist anymore. Like, these actors already passed away and they still have a big prominent role in a Hollywood blockbuster. So like, it's coming. I really know it's coming.

Yeah, absolutely. As you were saying earlier on with the complementary software, from film and apparel working together. It's all these different industries that are developing VR. One industry will take VR to its absolute peak and then the other industries can take it from them. Yeah. And so everyone's doing their bit, really. And so it's just whoever manages to get there first and then you can use it. You guys also do some virtual fit stuff as well. I mean, Kerry, You were telling me about, you've got a virtual model of yourself or of some sort, is that correct?

Yeah, correct. So I have a 3D scan of myself, which is basically me living in 3D space. Okay. If you would see the videos, it just looks like me, but just a 3D model. And then we took it one step further where Amber created from one of her sketches, she created 3D garment for my 3D body, did, you know, custom tailored 3D fitting. And then we added some motion capture elements to my 3D model to make me dance in ways that I'm not capable of dancing myself, to truly test the layering and the movement of the clothing. And like, the crazy thing about that is like, when you see yourself in 3D space doing stuff that, you know, you can't do yourself, there's a certain psychological element to it, you know, like to see yourself in third, third person just feels very, very weird. And to see yourself in third person wearing things that you would never wear before or even think of to wear. Like if you, let's say you go to a brick-and-mortar store to try something on, but then, you know, you have a 3D designer coming and just putting some funky clothing on you. And all of a sudden you see yourself in this form, like, oh hey, by the way, how would I feel if I would actually wear this? You know, it takes away a certain fear of, you know, like, you know, trying things on yourself. You're really playing with your identity in third person. I find that such like an interesting thing that we can still play around with so much.

Yeah, that's really cool because as you say, the clothes sometimes that you walk past and you think, ah, maybe, but do I want to be seen walking to the changing room and sort of putting that on? That kind of thing, you know? I don't know if that's me. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but I'm too scared to try it. So yeah, I quite like that.

Yeah.

So we really think like what we want to create for the future is some type of kind of e-commerce experience where you're capable of uploading your own avatar and let's say like Zalando website or whatever, like one of these online clothing websites that you can really just try on like their whole collection of clothing on your 3D avatar. I think that's the future of like, let's say, online shopping as well.

Yeah, it would save so many returns.

Yeah.

Yeah, massively. How do you guys measure your digital avatar? Sort of how did you create it? Was it cameras?

Yes, it's a combination of 3D scanning, but also using different software. So, for instance, at the moment we are working with avatars created in the software, but of course we would want to move to actual human bodies or actual human, yeah, because digital avatars usually are still a bit too perfect. So they're super symmetrical and they're just like, and humans are just not symmetrical. So a lot of times your shoulder's a little bit higher on this side and, you know, or your leg is a little bit longer, or— and it's really interesting because with digital, for instance, 3D digital scans, you have a lot of information of sizing of actual people, because now what the industry works with is just standard sizing. So, you know, for ladies, 34, 36, 38, 40, and you just have to fit inside of that scope. While actually in the past you had a garment that was tailorly made, tailor-made for you in a certain way. And it's an interesting project that I've worked on in the past that actually worked with sizing of soldiers. And there was 15,000 Dutch soldiers being scanned in, like, and we had so much data of their bodies. And with that, you can create a very nice fitting scheme that actually includes much, much more people than just the 34, 38, 40. So I see us in the future also going towards that type of attitude that you really have a more human fit instead of such a dictated fit from the industry, but that you can have a more tailored fit to your own needs and what do you need as a person. And I feel like it's becoming much more personal as well in the future.

There's an interesting thing here, whereas it's the commercialization of these tools. There are undoubtedly going to be hundreds of different people, companies who want to get into this space. To make money from it. And the interoperability of software, of data, is going to become a factor in this, in that we will need a regulations body, for instance, to say that when you— maybe there'll be lots of different ways of taking the information.

Yeah.

But for instance, if one company is working with let's say Zalando, and another company is working with Amazon. If I work with a company that's working with Zalando, can I then upload my information to the company that's working with Amazon? You know, is there going to be a regulatory body that's going to come in and say, look, we can't have 100 different ways of doing this because it doesn't make sense? I mean, what do you think about that?

I think at the moment what's the most interesting thing is I just really would love that it would be open source, you know, that we could all work together. Because what happens in the fashion industry a lot is that people close off, shut the doors, you know, they don't want anyone to, to know what they're doing. Also new collections, you know, it's like so closed off. Well, I have the feeling that if you bring it more towards open source, you know, you can really work together to this new future.

I mean, maybe you want to add something to Oh, I find it a difficult question. I see so much sizing and fitting technologies and startups, and it's like the fashion, the digital fashion industry is trying to fix the sizing issue. That's kind of like the number one, and everybody's in a race to figure it out because they know that it's, you know, going to be billion-dollar company, you know, whoever fixes it. But I seriously don't have a clue where it's going, how it will work, other than, you know, just our own example of like having a 3D scan of yourself and being able to do custom tailoring on that. And I would say, like what you were saying earlier on, that it's all these different industries innovating on these technological sides. And especially the healthcare industry, they're doing a lot when it comes down to body scanning as well. I think they will be probably the first ones to implement true body scanning into their workflow because of the, yeah, whatever health issues that you can solve with that.

Yeah, well, it's a need, isn't it? It's a real need there.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And when there's like, let's say, a human life at stake, at stake, I think the, you know, the development will go much, much faster. And I think, I will, I think my feeling says that the healthcare will innovate on that, and then that will kind of come into the fashion industry. And maybe you also know the example from Amazon, that they were inviting people to come to their headquarters in New York to get a free body scan, and then they would additionally give like a $250 voucher to go with your body scan that you can use for the Amazon online shopping experience. So there's something coming there as well, you know, like I'm not really sure what Amazon's doing because they also purchased one of the innovation companies when it came down to body scanning. So I'm sure they're trying out a lot of things, but let's say if Amazon hasn't figured it out now yet, you know, I'm sure there's still a lot of barriers of entry. A lot of challenges when it comes down to the whole online sizing. And this is new to me as well, a regulations body as well. Yeah, that's— I've never heard of that. But yeah, I think that's an interesting topic.

So we also run a side project called the 3D Retail Coalition, which is something you guys should sign up to. It's in the early stages. Basically, the goal is to tackle the interoperability issues within fashion and apparel 3D use, and that's very much on the design and development sort of virtual sampling stages. Because as you will know, obviously everyone has their own software, and if you have these many stages within the design and pre-production phase, And if some offices are using different softwares, um, sometimes it's not all working together very well. So one of the goals there is to create a set of standards, um, that everyone can adhere to within the industry. Um, cause I think this kind of thing is important, as you say, Amber, when things are open source, when people maybe keep the profitability of the company, but also maybe lose a little bit of IP for the progression of an industry as a whole to let things get better. It's finding that right balance. It's a hard balance to find as you guys as business owners, you know, but it's probably one that kind of has to happen eventually. And with the advent of 3D technology use in fashion apparel being quite new, hopefully we can all collaborate together and, you know, live in this world where we still make money and we progress the industry forward as well.

Well, you know, in the, let's say, the film industry, there's a lot of software going around, there's a lot of 3D software, and all the 3D, even though there's a lot of differences between the software, they're all interoperable. Like, you can take the 3D that you make in one software, you can use it in another one because they've created a set of kind of universal file formats. That, you know, you can export and import to any software. And that's essentially what we're doing as well. We're utilizing several different software for, you know, their tools just to kind of create something. So I hope fashion software tools, I hope that they're going to have the same type of thing, you know. There's enough space, you know, for everybody to play there, you know. There doesn't have to be just one piece of software for the whole industry. You know, there can be dozens of different software as long as they somehow just incorporate like some type of, you know, file formats that we can all use them because we're kind of hitting a wall at the moment, you know, getting some, you know, 3D files from one client and we can't open them because we don't use their software. And we're trying to figure out ways around that. We have to request to the client, hey, can you actually export this file format to us? Because otherwise we can't use it. And it's quite new, you know, that discussion is very new for these fashion companies as well. But I think it will come, you know, just again, looking at the example of what the film industry has done, you know, which is a very collaborative environment, which is really very inclusive, you know, they really want to share information, they want to share assets. And that's something that I don't see with the fashion industry at the moment. They're very secretive, they don't want to share anything. You can't even find people online because they want to hide from the world. I'm not sure why, but I think that will change with the new generation as well.

Yeah.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Absolutely, more collaboration, more inclusivity, and the industry will move forward and get to all these amazing places where we know it can go. I know we had a lot to get through and maybe we can talk again another time about some of the incredible things that Amber, I know that you were doing on the design side. And I know that you guys have some release in September. What's going on in September?

So we're actually working together with Fashion Innovation Agency in London, together with also Clo3D, the software company. And Sadie Clayton, who's a fashion designer, UK-based fashion designer. And we have a complete 3D digital fashion project coming out together with her. And then we have some collaboration with a luxury retailer from Asia and also a Pakistani denim company. So yeah, a lot of great developments. All digital fashion, hardly any physical fashion involved. And like, we're really just looking forward to bring this stuff out because then we truly show our capabilities of what it means, you know, when there's a budget involved and to actually bring, you know, clothing into the digital space and the amount of kind of engagement that you can get out of it. And yeah, I'm very curious to see what the reactions will be. When we launch these 3 projects.

Yeah, well, I can't wait. If, um, for all of those listening, go to thefabricant.com.

Yeah, that's right.

Follow them on Twitter, LinkedIn, all the social stuff. You're everywhere.

No, no, no Twitter.

Instagram, Instagram, Instagram, LinkedIn, Instagram.

No Twitter.

Is Twitter the place to be? I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. Do we need to be—

who knows anymore? LinkedIn is where I spend most of my time.

Yeah, LinkedIn is working the best at the moment for everything that we're doing.

Yeah, I like it. I like it. It works well. It works well. So yeah, look guys, it's been an absolute pleasure to discuss all things 3D with you today. And yeah, Fabricant's a great new thing that I've come across in the last few months. I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes.

Thanks. Really appreciate it.

Thank you so much for having us.

Pleasure.

Alright.