Meet Amber Jae Slooten, the designer behind the world’s first digital dress on the blockchain

Meet Amber Jae Slooten, who had founded and now at 28, co-commands the Netherlands-based digital fashion house, the Fabricant, behind the design and sale of the world’s first digital-only dress on the blockchain – Iridescence.

So goes the mission of ‘The Fabricant’. In an exclusive interview with Gulf News, Slooten says, “When we sold the item, it was absolutely insane. Because it was selling for almost Dh35,000 (roughly $9500), the whole world stopped. Everybody was like, ‘What, are you paying money for a dress that doesn’t exist? Like how is that even possible?’”

This could still be the solution to your digital self-expression in an age where most people spend their time on the internet. Do you need an #OOTD, or Outfit of the Day to share on social media? Instead of buying a one-piece dress, choose a digital gown for your avatar or photo. Better still, expect an infinite range of options for style when gaming, your custom Snapchat characters, Instagram, cruising in the Metaverse and all the new digital spaces we now inhabit… even video calls.

Slooten says, “We really like to ask that question, ‘What is the difference? Slooten asks, “If millions see you in it online, does that mean you don’t need it in real life?” You can express yourself so richly in the virtual world, you wouldn’t need all those physical clothes anymore….”

Case in point – we’re on a zoom call, and she’s wearing NFT (Non-fungible token) earrings that sit as a filter on her video from her latest collection. They’re sparkly metal ones that dangle almost down to her shoulders, moving with every tilt of her head. It’s a digital ‘wearable’, certainly very striking and lifelike – I am entranced.

Slooten says, “I am able to speak to you from such a distance. You can also see me through my digital lens which allows you to wear digital objects. This is how we see the future, we will all see things though a digital lens or glass….”

With the stuff that we’re not wearing – if we don’t make any more physical clothing for the coming 50 years, we can still dress ourselves with all the clothing that’s still on this planet. I think what we have to come to terms with is this fact that this just no longer works – there’s nothing that can bring an answer to still wanting to express ourselves, still wanting to show our identity, but not having it have the impact on the planet that it has now.

Amber Jae Slooten

She adds, “With the stuff that we’re not wearing – if we don’t make any more physical clothing for the coming 50 years, we can still dress ourselves with all the clothing that’s still on this planet. I think what we have to come to terms with is this fact that this just no longer works – there’s nothing that can bring an answer to still wanting to express ourselves, still wanting to show our identity, but not having it have the impact on the planet that it has now.“

The digital world of fashion design is now accessible to everyone. She says, “I think in the future, everybody will anyway have a digital version of themselves. It’s as if you were to dress the digital version of yourself. How would you express yourself, and especially if you have an interest in fashion, you don’t need to start a physical label anymore, you can do it digitally…. That’s my wish for young designers, to be able to express themselves and use this to create a livelihood for themselves like I did, like we did.”

Her journey began where? While growing up in Arnhem, a little city in eastern Netherlands, her mother would sew many dresses – and little Amber could request special ones for herself. She says, “With that vision of what clothing can mean, I was always very busy with clothing in my life, expressing myself. I was very fascinated with identity and what that means.”

She was also a millennial kid caught on the cusp of the digital revolution – playing virtual reality games like SIMS, Second Life , IMVU as well, in which players create digital avatars for themselves and live as a citizen in these worlds, building a full life, complete with a family, job and daily routines.

IMVU characters – A virtual reality game. 

She says, “You could change your avatars in IMVU, dress them, you could buy clothing, create your own clothing… I used to game for hours, and really downloading all kinds of weird hacks to hack the SIMS and create my own looks.”

However, digital fashion design was first developed by the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences fashion design students. This is because of her past gaming experiences. “As a young designer, you think like, ‘Oh wow, glamorous fashion is going to be amazing, expressing yourself and making beautiful things’. But then you realise there’s such a serious connotation to the pollution in the industry, and the way it is treating people as well. That kind of broke my reality….

“That’s when I started experimenting with digital fashion, because we had a minor in school, where they were teaching us how to fit clothing in 3D.” As a demo, you could fit clothing on an avatar, and then see how the garment would look like when created, and she loved the freedom to create anything and everything. “I remember, the first time I was using the software, you can just like drape digital fabric on top and bend it around the doll, which for me felt like a huge freedom, because suddenly, I didn’t need to go to the fabric store anymore for my creations but I could just create them in the digital realm….

“I remember thinking, why do we still need to make that in real life? Why can’t we wear that digitally on characters and like go into virtual spaces?”

Pursuing this field was an immense challenge – she faced laughter and disbelief at every turn. She says, “They said, why would you do something like that, so ridiculous… get your head out of this VR glasses, it is never going to happen….”

But, she was adamant, and went to her teacher about her final assessment as a fashion student, a fashion show, saying, “I don’t want to create any clothes ever again, like physical clothes…. I want to show you guys that I can do this, without having to physically produce the garments.”

She became the first person from her university to graduate with a non-physical collection – a 3D fashion show in virtual reality.

She worked with students from the department to create 3D models. They used motion capture technology, which records the movement of the models, and simulates the clothes on the top. She says, “The design process is very different, it is very much about creating the sculptural idea of moving around the body, and use of digital fabric to do that.”

Kerry Murphy was a co-founder and now CEO of Fabricant. He saw the collection at the graduation ceremony. He was an expert in 3D modelling, with his own advertising studio and was intrigued by the show – later comparing it to the shift from analog film to digital film, where now we can all film each other with cameras on our phone. She counts herself lucky to have met the right people: “He thought what I was doing was also very interesting, because he felt like, wow, this is a new way of looking at an industry… right now everything is physical, but in the future, everybody will be able to become a digital fashion designer.”

After working together on various projects, Slooten and Murphy launched ‘The Fabricant’ in 2018, in The Netherlands.

In her role as creative director she creates in the midst of all her executive tasks. “I would endlessly lose myself in creating things in the software, and working with the team because it’s so highly creative. You can create anything, you can you create your own reality, like there’s nothing that you cannot do with digital space, which is really scary sometimes, because you start with like this blank canvas …. One of the things we find very interesting, is with NFTs, you can design with time, so you no longer just make a dress that will be the same when you finish, but maybe you program into the dress – that within a month, it changes colour or changes the shape.”

They have gone from releasing their first project as a free downloadable collection to ‘Iridescence’, and now having global collaborations with companies like Tommy Hilfiger, Adidas, Puma, Under Armour amongst others – buoyed by the shift to digital during the pandemic.

She says, “Before when I used to say to people, ‘Oh, I do digital fashion, people were like, what is that? Now people say, “Oh, yeah, it’s true. Yeah, I heard about this, it’s like these filters right?’”

Slooten also created the Fabricant Studio, which allows anyone to design and wear a digital fashion item, or mint it and then sell it as an NFT. Slooten was struck by how much people love the process of choosing garments and fabrics, and creating their own digital look.

Slooten says, “What we’ve seen is that when people wear it, they really love it. They see that there’s so much potential and that we can all create that together.” They’d recently done a fashion show in Berlin, Germany, where a model with skin-coloured clothing walked the runway, and people watched through their phones. Why? “People could scan a QR code with the filter on it, and they would be able to see her wearing this digital item… we had never really done that before. But it worked really well.”

Who are the main customers? Slooten claims that Gen Z and young millennials are the main consumers.

She adds, “We see digital first as becoming the new reality. So you basically have maybe a few very high-quality pieces in real life that are just very comfortable.” Then, you can freely experiment with digital expression in every platform you use online.