FORBES ✧ Interview with Nataliya Grimberg, fashion futurist

Forbes: Nataliya Grimberg teaches fashion how to use AI and virtual reality with her innovation lab

We live in a consumerist world where the desire for newness and trends never subsides. In response, fashion designer and innovator Nataliya Grimberg speaks out with a strong voice. “I don’t want to re-educate the behavioral patterns of a consumer society, I want to find ways in which we can still consume, but with minimal impact on nature,” she says. She sees the path to sustainability not in a direct fight against consumerism, but in finding innovative ways to connect reality with modern technologies – from AI to virtual and augmented reality.

Nataliya Grimberg claims to live in 3024 and describes herself as a fashion futurist: she was already incorporating AI and augmented reality into traditional crafts while studying fashion design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague under the guidance of Pavel Ivančice. Her first collection was created seven years ago in collaboration with Alexa and Siri.

“What would you wear if you had a human body?” the native of Kazakhstan asked the state-of-the-art artificial intelligence at the time, which was still a long way from what it is today. Even then, however, she saw an opportunity in the combination of traditional craftsmanship and technology, so she began to teach herself programming, create her own AI models, and discover the unknown.

"In most cases, you just couldn't google how to do it, no one had tried it before me," Grimberg laughs, recalling learning by trial and error. 

Today, she has organized her own and historically first Metaverse Fashion Week in 2022, and as a trend forecaster she collaborates with, for example, the Czech crystal brand Preciosa and the London-based agency Unique Style Platform. She is also an active member of the Girls in Metaverse initiative.

"This is a particularly important project for me. I think it's crucial for women to gain a foothold in a male-dominated industry. We also feel the need to get women into the metaverse as it's being developed, especially since women are statistically the primary users," says Grimberg. 

In April of this year, she also teamed up with Italian fashion brand Dolce & Gabbana to create an NFT collection of digital designs that were presented as part of the Metaverse fashion week in Decentraland.

“It was great to bring this iconic brand into the web 3.0 space and design digital wearables that engaged both traditional fans and new audiences in the metaverse. Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana were directly involved in the selection process, which was inspiring and took the whole process to a new level,” Grimberg recalls. 

For four years, Grimberg has been involved in organizing the We're Next fashion event and plans to establish his own Haute Future agency in 2025, which will focus on connecting fashion and innovation.

"Haute Future will be a laboratory of the future, where the latest technological trends will meet with the vision of the fashion industry and new approaches to sustainability and digital solutions will emerge," Grimberg entices.

A key point of her vision is connecting the fashion industry to technological solutions that can bring about a fundamental change in production.

"In addition to overproduction, the problem is that we are using materials that will not decompose even in hundreds of years," says Grimberg, who places her hopes in the development of recycled and recyclable materials, such as substances from waste from the fruit industry.

Globally, only twelve percent of textile waste is reused or recycled: "I believe it wouldn't be science fiction to have a 3D printer at home with an AI tool that asks me what I want to wear tomorrow, scans me, and designs a custom-made model for me, which it prints from filament that can be recycled into new filament almost immediately," he explains.

And it demonstrates its commitment to supporting the technological development of sustainable materials, as well as its understanding that the fight against consumerism can be waged in a different style than teaching society to renounce. 

According to Grimberg, the next step is to visualize and test the product before it is physically manufactured, which would allow estimating the exact amount of materials needed and thus preventing overproduction and excess waste.

This principle could also appeal to fast fashion brands, who could plan more efficiently while eliminating the need to create unnecessary and redundant samples, of which over 92 million tons end up in landfills every year. This amount is constantly growing and is estimated to reach 134 million tons per year by 2030. 

Thanks to virtual and augmented reality, customers could view products from the comfort of their homes and even "try them out" through XR applications or "magic mirrors", the development of which Grimberg is also actively involved in cooperation with Xbros.

But for this to be not only possible, but also normal, virtual and augmented reality will have to become part of our everyday lives.

"Adults today can't spend that much time in a VR headset or haptic Tesla Suit. Virtual reality is not yet a common part of life for us like an iPhone or Instagram," Grimberg explains, portraying the most common users of the metaverse, who are so-called digital natives, children and teenagers between the ages of nine and fifteen.

Nataliya cites, for example, the unclear, if not non-existent, boundary between the metaverse and reality as a specific characteristic of digital natives.

“Over sixty percent of teenagers who use Roblox – one of the most popular metaverses – first try out a new outfit or haircut in virtual reality. If they like it, they will also project it onto their physical persona,” Grimberg illustrates.

So how can we get into the Web 3.0 era? "It's as unimaginable to us now as it was unimaginable a few decades ago that we would all have an iPhone with WhatsApp in our pockets. But I believe I'm not talking about the distant future," he says.

"In the era of web 3.0, social networks will be immersive and 3D, we will be able to chat not on a 2D platform, but in a room within WhatsApp or Messenger that will reflect our personality. This environment will no longer be unified, thanks to AI tools that can generate such an environment based on our requirements within a few minutes."

Over sixty percent of teenagers who use Roblox first try out a new outfit or haircut in virtual reality.

But we can already see such Web 3.0 assistants in our current world - examples include Snapchat's Spectacles glasses or the upcoming Meta Orion AR glasses, which will transfer digital content directly into reality. "We will have navigation, notifications and even virtual outfits right in front of our eyes," explains the innovator. 

But he also mentions another important aspect of the Web 3.0 era – ownership. Such an era will be, and in fact already is, closely linked to blockchain, a decentralized public database.

"At our Metaverse Fashion Week, every piece and avatar was uploaded to the blockchain, where its owner and any transactions can be traced. Web 3.0 thus treats our rights and property in decentralized land much better than Web 2.0, where we are essentially the products ourselves. We create the data and content that someone else owns and trades with," explains Grimberg, citing giants such as Meta or X.

Despite all the advantages mentioned above, isn't this vision of the future rather pessimistic, even dystopian? "I'm a techno-optimist," Grimberg laughs.

"I believe that thanks to virtual and augmented reality, we can, for example, make education accessible: instead of boringly sitting in a classroom, children will be able to sail through the ocean, get to know marine animals 'firsthand'. They will be able to explore individual planets up close, find out how a spacecraft works on a real example."

According to Grimberg, the change will also be felt in healthcare and sports: "The wearables used include sports T-shirts that measure our heart rate, Oura rings, or shoes printed on a 3D printer based on a scan of the foot to ensure a perfect fit." 

Grimberg also mentions potential benefits for travel: "Imagine that while walking through Rome, the ancient appearance of the city is projected directly into your glasses, displaying points of interest or geographical data about all the tourist sites and monuments. It's not just about sitting at home with a headset, but using technology to experience reality even more intensely," he says.

And this subtly defines the vision of the future portrayed, for example, in the popular film Ready Player One, directed by Steven Spielberg. 

Read original interview at: https://life.forbes.cz/neni-treba-jen-odrikani-nataliya-grimberg-uci-modu-vyuzivat-ai-a-virtualni-realitu/