Scarlett Qi posted a very interesting article at SLNN today.
 SHENGRI LA - A new management program is being released that will greatly enhance the speed of designing real life fashion. Using virtual worlds, like Second Life and Open Sim, fashion designers will be about to create their product in a 3-D world, manage the production, and produce factory-ready specifications.
The Fashion Research Institute (FRI) in conjunction with IBM is developing a product lifecycle management solution for the fashion industry that specifically addresses the industry’s unique needs, cutting time to market. Designers will be able to access 3-D tools from within SL or Open Sim to create their fashion product. The 3-D models of the design can be shown in a virtual showroom. Everyone who has a share in the product will be available to review the design: product managers, designers, design directors, merchandizers, costers, executives, sales staff and show room managers. After the creative vision has been finalized, factory specifications are created that will enable the item to be manufactured in real life.
“Soon all fashion designers will be originating their designs and managing the production in virtual worlds,â€Â Shenlei Winkler (Shenlei Flasheart in SL), director of the Fashion Research Institute said. “Why such a dramatic change? Economics, pure and simple.â€
What do you think? Would you like to own your SL closet in RL? Is this economically feasible?
When is the part where you do your own post ideas instead of stealing other bloggers ideas? Bad pictures of clothes you’re wearing don’t count. Not even when you tell us how much you love them and how they pop your pixels.
OH hell yeah!
OMG, gonna go make up a list of designers to annoy into doing this.
Um… doesn’t this mean SL will become full of RL designers selling their mock-up designs and therefore taking business away from SL designers? I fear for the future of our wee world sometimes. Please God, don’t let it become like RL full of commercial rubbish!!!
I don’t think that’s a risk, honestly. It sounds like it’s suggesting the potential for combining 3-D prototyping of outfits with the conferencing capabilities of SL, or other virtual spaces. No indication that it would be public at all or that there’d be any interest in their maintaining a public presence to sell the product, much less any risk that they’d take over the SL fashion industry.
I can totally see the capabilities in SL for business conferencing of all sorts but I am curious to know what real-life designers think of SL’s 3-D tools. Our own creators have gotten very good with them, but I think the output is more in spite of the available tools and mesh limitations than because of them. Should designers really take to this method I think we’d see a separate professional virtual space with much more robust 3-D tools available for the purpose of gathering together virtually to look at their product – something with a tighter focus than SL.