Day one to zero, it was a week full of fashion. During the four-day fashion schedule, Turkish brands streamlined brand new, exciting and innovative collections. From artistic sides of short films to online talks to up-to-date contents, Istanbul Fashion Week has brought 360-degree digital experience to it’s audience.
It’s the perfect time for the “How can we regulate the world we share?” conversation. This applies to more eco-friendly, carbon-neutral and distanced physical runway solutions. For instance, the phygital is the way forward. Let’s set our timelines to June 24th. It was a hot summer noon when Ermenegildo Zegna brought into existence a strange word. When Alessandro Sartori first invented this word, he was presenting his Spring 2021 Menswear collection in a small town called Trivero in Milan. Since then, phygital has come to refer to a fashion show event that is part IRL and part URL, ranging from physical displays combined with visual effects. Postconsumer experiencec is real.
Could we be looking at a future of fashion weeks that? Although, Fashion Week Istanbul is not it is not cap-a-pie phygital for now, but we are comfortable saying; “It is quite good in digital.”
During quarantine, Mehtap Elaidi began a social media project which offers illustrative design options for Mehtap Elaidi's Instagram followers. Consequently, limited number of designs were produced in line with the answers of Elaidi's Instagram community. It seems virtual shows offer limitless opportunity to express brand’s message, and Elaidi’s message was a sincere one.
Of course, there are certain hallenges in adapting to the digital world. Foremost, Hakaan Yıldırım had some hesitations about transforming work of emotions into digital threads packaged with the new world order. But to quote in his own words, “He has an online voice more able to authentically, speak digitally, the way he can speak in fashion and art.”
Hatice Gökçe, a design talent for good, has inspired by Gen-Z’s sensitive, conscious and respectful mindset on her latest Newborn collection. “As long as I can remember I have always been very sensitive to my environment, to nature, to our world. Knowing that the textile industry is the second largest sector polluting the world has always led me to make more environmentally friendly designs and production.” As a result, her current focus is on Ehram fabric as a local fabric, İpekiş— containing 100% natural and pure wool— and Acrycycle, the future fiber as they called.
In the long run, FWI’s calendar have new component and ecological futures. Not only us, but the whole world simultaneously goes through the same labour. Traditional fashion shows are transferring into mindful and minimalist concepts and popularity becomes less important in this quickly switching digital format. We are not saying in-person Fashion Week format is TOTALLY over, it is almost impossible to go fully virtual, but designers and brands will come to a point where digital world felt really good.
Author: Zeynep Gür
