An Unwelcome Addition to the Fashion Industry

When luxury fashion brand Balmain dropped its Pre-Fall collection last month, clothing wasn’t the first thing to make headlines. Featured in the company’s advertisements were three digitally designed models, making Balmain one of the first major brands to utilize such a medium. In the campaign were digital models Shudu, Margot, and Zhi, designed by French photographer Cameron-James Wilson. Of the trio, South African model Shudu had been specially curated by Wilson since 2017, amassing over 100,000 followers on her various social media accounts.

Wilson described the rise of Shudu as a platform to bring diversity to the fashion industry and serve as a vessel to help developing enterprises. As for her usage in Balmain’s recent campaign, Balmain stated simply that “the new virtual troops reflect the same beautiful diverse mix, strong confidence, and eagerness to explore new worlds. Anyone and everyone is always welcome to join the Balmain Army.” But while Wilson and the Balmain team may see Shudu as a source of empowerment, her rise in popularity suggests the opposite.

According to TheFashionSpot, 30 percent of all models that walked in the 2018 New York Fashion Week shows were non-white. This statistic, compared to the meer 17 percent of models of color represented on the runway in Spring of 2015, shows a steady uptick in diversity. Although influenced by various social movements and public backlash, the rise in models of color is still a work in progress. Despite Shudu attempting to bring “awareness” to the lack of diversity in fashion, she may actually serve as an easy alternative for major brands; just about every superficial aspect on Shudu can be changed through the work of a handful of photoshop and 3D program specialists. No human model could ever compete with that, making Shudu’s impact a complete backfire from her original intentions.

Introducing a cheaper and physically moldable model into the world of fashion could not only undo years worth of diversification, but also rob thousands of human models of their jobs. Although a full rejection of physical models is unlikely, their digital counterparts could ultimately dominate the industry and leave an irreversible impact on the job market. In addition to models, photographers, makeup artists, and even crew extras will face the repercussions of fashion merging with technology. More so, a model whose appearance, age, body type, and facial features can be changed within hours sets an alarming example for the thousands of citizens, particularly women, who look up to fashion models for their body or facial features. As extreme as it may seem, the impact of an ability to drastically change a model’s complexion should not be underestimated.

Yet, it is important to consider that digital models will likely never replace human models entirely. What makes today’s top models so successful is a holistic combination of their aesthetically pleasing faces and/or bodies in addition to a strategically designed persona. A model not only has to look physically appealing, but also must navigate her way through the competitive industry via certain unique traits: either her nationality, personality, or another in demand feature. Digital models lack such qualities, thus counting as one of the several hindering factors to their domination of the fashion industry. More so, much of the fashion industry is based upon human interaction, whether it happens between photographers and crews shooting campaigns with models or during high-end runway shows. One could easily argue that humans will always prefer working with fellow humans over intangible 3D images. With that being said, digital models still pose a significant threat to the success of the hundreds of thousands of jobs the fashion industry supports. While they may not eradicate all modeling jobs per say, digital models still have the potential to claim most of them.

As if digital models could not do any more damage, their influence on remaining human models could be terrifying. According to model advocacy group TheModelAlliance, 31.2 percent of fashion models struggle with eating disorders, with an estimated 85-90 percent of non-plus-sized models being underweight (underweight is defined by the World Health Organization as a BMI below 18.5; for instance, 5’11 model Sannie Pederson was a mere 100 pounds at the height of her career, with a BMI of 13.9). Despite the efforts of various social movements, such statistics could only get worse as human models feel the pressure to compete for jobs with their digital rivals.

While digital fashion models continue to rise, brands should be extremely hesitant to hire them and their creators. Not only do these seemingly innocent creations threaten to demolish thousands of jobs, but they also counteract the hard work that has been done to diversify the fashion industry. Fashion labels like Balmain are fortunate enough to have thousands of unique faces to choose from when curating a campaign and should rarely, if ever, choose pixels over humans. At the end of the day, the rise of technology is inevitable, but supporting rising human models is entirely in our control.