Virtual reality in fashion as shows shut down

With the fashion industry currently grounded, agency owner Robyn Catinella has turned to the virtual world

Robyn Catinella at her PR/Sales showroom in Paddington. Picture: John Feder/The Australian.

Like so many business owners, five months ago Robyn Catinella was facing uncertainty and “crippling fear” about the future of her fashion PR and sales agency.

Today, she has found a “whole new energy” — embracing the virtual world and launching a new division for her business.

When COVID-19 struck, and everyone was grounded for the foreseeable future, much of Catinella’s business model was grounded with it.

Four times a year, she would fly with her team and a coterie of designers to set up showrooms in Paris and New York, where international buyers and retailers would come to look at the new collections and place orders.

Unable to fly to Paris in June to sell the latest Resort collections, she and her team quickly designed a simple but effective virtual showroom.

It worked. Sales for Resort 2021 collections were up 223 per cent on the previous Resort season last year.

That early success suggested that she was on to something, but it still didn’t do justice to her regular Paris showroom experience.

Looking for something more experiential, and unable to find a one-stop solution from global suppliers, Catinella did a deep dive into the world of virtual reality technology, predominantly in the worlds of gaming and film, and applied them to the world of fashion.

The result is, she believes, a world-first offering that has created an entirely new division of her business: Catinella VR.

“For me nothing will replace reality, but we’re now in a world that won’t allow for that,” Catinella tells The Weekend Australian.

Catinella has a patent pending on what she has called “The Pipeline” — a step-by-step template for clients.

The Pipeline involves multiple parties to create virtual solutions for the fashion industry, whether a virtual sales showroom or a bespoke catwalk experience, for example.

Those parties include 3D technicians using Clo (used in fashion design) and Unreal Engine (largely used in the gaming industry), motion-capture technology, LED capture technology, and animators, for example.

A model avatar, Azu Ray, has been built from scratch and can showcase designs in motion.

The Pipeline offers two options: virtual reality or virtual production.

Virtual reality offers designers and brands the possibility of not having to create expensive sample collections.

Creating the designs with Clo 3D technology, these can then be translated into VR, allowing for the softness, fall and movement of the intended fabric. The virtual samples are then rigged to the avatar in the showroom environment.

“It’s easy to do renders of architecture or furniture, but when it gets to furnishings or clothing, and the physics behind the make-up of each fabric, to get that precision is an art form in itself,” says Catinella.

“The fluidity of each garment is down to the 3D specialists. That’s where the Unreal Engine comes in.”

With VR, the resulting film can be watched simply on a computer screen, or with an Oculus headset that puts the viewer in the same room.

The second option, virtual production, uses LED capture technology, which serves as a new green screen. In this instance, a real model can be filmed in physical samples in front of an LED screen that displays the desired background.

“The quality is far superior to green screen,” says Catinella,

“I think many people will like LED. You’re working with a real model, a real creative team.”

One of the key partners for the project is Spectre Studios, based at Sydney’s Fox Studios, which focuses on using Unreal Engine for video games and virtual production for the film industry “and now the fashion industry, apparently”, says co-founder Mark Grentell with a laugh.

“We know nothing about fashion, but we understand technology and storytelling,” he says.

He says that while the fashion industry “is very fashion forward, it’s not very tech forward”, and agrees that this new Pipeline solution is “definitely” a world-leading offering.

Avatar Azu Ray in the Catinella VR showroom, in a design by Esse Studios.

With proof of concept now built for both offerings, Grentell says, “This is a way to bring designers’ creations to market in a virtual way now that distance is such a tyranny.

“It bridges those gaps. Just like we all found a way to Zoom, fashion has to be seen and experienced and watched to see how it moves. VR gives you chance to do that, while virtual production allows you to put those literal designs in any environment you want — it’s a melding of video, filmmaking and fashion.”

Catinella says that while these new technologies aren’t cheap, they compare favourably with a physical fashion show or showroom presentation.

Ironically, while things were looking uncertain at the start of the pandemic, Catinella’s main business has signed more clients since it began.

She hopes that this new arm of the business will expand to working with clients across the luxury and creative industries.

“One of the great things about being so isolated is everyone is so connected through innovation,” says Catinella.

“Hopefully we will keep pushing those boundaries. At the moment it feels like a bit of a vortex. Some are not ready to step into vortex, some are being thrown around in it, while others are on the other side and loving it.”