Online Tailoring, Offline Restoration Of Customized Clothing, Digital Twins Give A New Chapter To The Clothing Industry

The whole process of garment design, production and sales is enabled through digital twin technology, which not only shortens the garment development cycle, but also reduces the waste of materials, accurately matches the market demand, and saves the cost of garment development.

Such online and offline "dream linkage" has recently become a reality on the "hyper realistic virtual fashion platform" developed by a science and innovation enterprise in Putuo, Shanghai - the development cycle of new clothing has been shortened by 50%, the development cost has been reduced by 40%, the research and development of invalid styles has been reduced by 80%, and the inventory investment has been reduced by 60%

How does this "hyper realistic virtual fashion platform" work? How to achieve such a large proportion of cost reduction and efficiency? The reporter walked into the platform R&D subject, Linkeda (Shanghai) Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. to have a look.

Gu Yulin graduated from Donghua University majoring in fashion design and engineering. He is a 3D designer in the company. As the name implies, his job responsibility can be simply understood as changing a garment from a design plane to a three-dimensional one. On his workbench, from the graphic design drawing to the three-dimensional effect of sewing the upper body, to the completion of printing, decoration, fabric and other details, a garment does not need a sewing machine, but needs to open multiple design drawing and meta universe development software at the same time.

"Whether the clothes are made of cotton or silk, whether they are printed or embroidered, they can be rendered by different special effects, and finally present a dynamic three-dimensional, magnifiable, rotatable, and dynamic visual effect that restores the real sample clothes." Gu Yulin told reporters that once buyers have new needs for clothing colors, patterns, fabrics, etc, Can be modified in real time on the online platform. If the changes are not significant, they can be completed in a few hours to half a day. In the process of modification, there will be no material loss.

Gu Yulin is doing 3D sewing of clothes

Such high efficiency is far beyond the reach of traditional garment sample production. On average, a sample of a garment often involves seven stages. For example, it takes about one-and-a-half days for a garment to be printed and sewed. When the prototype sample is finally produced, the manufacturer often needs to provide the buyer with samples of different colors, patterns and fabrics. These physical samples, which have been modified for many times, enter the warehouse from the factory workshop and often end up in the landfill.

"So we thought of using digital twin technology to apply to the reduction technology of clothing soft materials. If it is realized, the material resources, human resources and time resources can be saved by no means a bit." Gong Yueting, the head of Linkeda (Shanghai) Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd., further gave an example, saying that to make a dress, from the designer's manuscript to the ready to wear listing, At least 8 sample clothes should be made during this period, and even 5 or 6 of them are totally useless and will be discarded later.

Applying Digital Twin Technology to the Reduction Technology of Soft Clothing Materials

In fact, this is the production law that everyone in the clothing industry is familiar with - from the graphic manuscript and design style of the designer to the pattern maker's determination of the shape and outline of the clothes, to the details of fabrics, accessories, embroidery patterns, etc., the sample clothes can become a qualified dress with both aesthetic feeling after several modifications. An ordinary garment contains meticulous craftsmanship of each link of the assembly line. However, under the pursuit of beauty and fashion, what is surging is actually a huge waste of material and labor costs.

Taking the "hyper realistic virtual fashion platform" developed by Rokda as an example, in the production process of clothes, the early modification of silhouette, fabric, decoration, color and other aspects can be realized online through digital twin technology. After the online "tailoring" is completed, the offline production of finished clothes will not only reduce the cost waste of multiple production of physical sample clothes, It also shortens the cycle of new product development and marketing. The data shows that in the new product development link, the cost can be reduced by nearly 40% and the time can be shortened by 50%.

Moreover, another highlight of this "hyper realistic virtual fashion platform" is that it has broken the gap between the "seller show" and the "buyer show" and achieved "what you see is what you get".

"The reality of online clothing is very high. You can always zoom in to see the fabric, and you can also input different data such as height, weight, and three circumference to observe the upper body effect of different figures. In addition to being unable to touch, what I see visually seems to be an ultra-high definition photo of a real dress. It saves the overseas logistics time of sending sample clothes back and forth, and speeds up the time for us to catch up with the research and development of new products in the new season. " An overseas brand party had a good experience after using this platform to see and order goods online. "After selecting goods online, it placed an order for production, and was also surprised after receiving the physical clothing. The effect was basically the same as that seen online, and it was highly authentic! We directly took it to Hong Kong to participate in the offline order meeting, and the effect was very good."

The scene of the scientific innovation market held by the enterprise in Putuo District

It is reported that this platform is accelerating the research and development of open interfaces, which can externally realize multiple functions such as online edition ordering, online fashion conferences, etc. "At the site of the scientific innovation fair organized by the Science and Technology Commission of Putuo District, we also got to know the dean of the School of Fashion Science of Shanghai University of Engineering Technology. A few days ago, we were carrying out a special research project on the invention patent of the standardized workflow of this platform, which not only led us to the latest technological research achievements in the academic community, but also further empowered our talent pool." Gong Yueting said.