Product development has long been undergoing a digital revolution, but the pandemic pushed these efforts into overdrive. Today, fashion companies continue to experiment with digital product creation software, and one of the main ingredients required is virtual materials.
Even ahead of 3D design’s work-from-home boost, research and promotion organization Cotton Incorporated was supporting the industry’s digital switch with FABRICAST™, a library of cotton-rich materials that can be used in programs like CLO and Browzwear. Cotton Incorporated continues to grow this range of virtual fabrics and develop new ways for the industry to explore its offerings. A prime example of this is Cotton Incorporated’s virtual showroom, which was launched in November.
Virtual visitors can “walk” through the showroom to view prototypes of garments made from FABRICAST™ textiles in categories such as activewear and denim. “It’s sort of like a native environment for digital fashion and digital fabrics,” said Katherine Absher, manager, fashion and digital design marketing in the Global Supply Chain Marketing Department at Cotton Incorporated, during a fireside chat with Jessica Binns in December. “And we use it to show brands, mills and…students what our fabrics could be and how they could be used, and what they could be doing with cotton in digital product creation.”
While some virtual showrooms mirror real places such as stores, Cotton Incorporated created a conceptual environment. “Our unique challenge was trying to come up with an imaginary space for the digital fabrics,” said Absher. The resulting concept was a field of cotton plants with a glassed-in structure in the middle that houses the showroom’s mannequins and interactive displays.
The virtual showroom is just the latest tool from Cotton Incorporated to aid designers in digital product creation. In 2021, the organization introduced a CottonWorks™ Fabric Library accessible within Browzwear, and similarly, Adobe Substance users can access a range of 12 free fabrics. The CottonWorks™ website also features educational resources like webinars for the industry to learn about creating virtually.
“Now that digital fabrics and 3D prototyping and DPC is more widely used, the industry is just working in a different way,” said Absher. “And we felt the need to offer a different kind of user experience from all the other ways that we currently connect with our audience, and to try to engage users in new ways.”
Watch the video to learn more about the virtual showroom and how Cotton Incorporated supports digital design.
