- Date
- 15 DECEMBER 2022
- Author
- ZARINA IZY
- Image by
- GIOVANNA MARCALLO THEREZA
- Categories
- Fashion
Artist’s spotlight – Giovanna Marcallo Thereza
Giovanna Marcallo Thereza, as known as Fantastic 3D Fashion, is a digital designer who is not new to the fashion industry. Coming from mass-market clothes production, she started a new chapter in her career, and life, and already got known for her tenaciousness and bright style. We, at Red Eye, are happy to welcome such a bold female creator as Giovanna Thereza!
Giovanna, when did you first start designing clothes?
My passion for clothes and fashion started when I was just a tiny little girl drawing dresses and models with my cousin in Brazil. I remember that we were maybe around 12 years old and we were creating our own brand, collecting figures from magazines and drawing also over them. We had a folder with all of them inside and the amazing part was that we both lived in different cities in Brazil, so we were sending each other the new designs by letter. It is funny to see how we were using the physical mailbox, as we didn´t have access to e-mails and the internet yet, and now we are talking about digital clothes after 20 years.
How did you get started in digital fashion?
I am from Brazil and I came to live in Spain in 2019 and study Design for Innovation at IED (Istituto Europeo di Design) in Barcelona. I got familiar with a lot of new technologies, start-ups and events in the textile market. Following all these events that were happening in Barcelona in 2019, I found some companies offering 3D software for designing clothes and also technologies for printing on textiles. As I am very curious about the match between tech and fashion, I started to search for courses to learn these tools. When in 2020 everything was turned upside down by the pandemic, I was on a new continent, totally alone and just starting my new life. I had to reinvent myself and I started to study software by watching YouTube videos and courses.
My background in the retail fashion market and my career as a Product Manager and Fashion Designer for the last 10 years helped me to get a scholarship for The first Digital Fashion Course by Parsons School and The Digital Fashion Group Academy. For me, it was a great opportunity to start integrating into the digital fashion market. After starting to learn, I couldn´t stop anymore. This not only has been my goal for my professional future but has also become my hobby and passion.
What were your first steps in the digital market?
Since I started my new career as Digital Fashion Designer, I tried always to be part of the main group in the market. The first challenge was to be able to sell my digital clothes on DressX. My first attempt, unfortunately, got denied. I didn´t give up and I developed a new, better collection and got accepted! So now I have my collection available on DRESSX.COM and for me, it is an amazing first achievement.
I had the opportunity to participate in Zero10 Open Call with my digital AR jumpsuit. Among 191 designs, I arrived in the leading positions and got featured in their app. Now I see my Abu Suit being worn as a filter by people on socials!
I recently joined a course from ADN ACADEMY and had the mentor Anna Adolfo, Ex Gucci Digital Director, to study deeper Marketing for the Metaverse and Web 3.0. After finishing the course, Anna Adolfo asked me to send them one of my fashion videos for their website. So if you will access the website of ADN ACADEMY - you will see one of my works there.
This semester I got a very interesting project in partnership with a Brazilian university. I am modelling all the designs from the fashion students to present their final projects in a virtual fashion show instead of the physical and not sustainable one. This project will be launched in March of next year and will be also realised as a documentary film in Brazil.
It was a great start! After the wave of collaborations had started for you, with which brands have you worked?
This year, 2022, was a year to start to build my place in the digital fashion market and show my work with several collaborations. On one hand, I had a few small collaborations with artists and startup platforms and on the other hand - big names also started to present good opportunities for great projects together. IZY Studio had an amazing idea to put designers from many parts of the world together and build a collection named “Soul of Sparta”, referenced by her physical collection. For this project, I designed the avatar GAIA and constructed a digital twin of her outfit, which starred in the Somnium Avatar Fashion Week in September this year. Now we are still working together to develop the next steps of this big project. We already have our virtual gallery on Spatial.io and the website to shop for the collection. Stay tuned for the next steps because something big will come up!!
The Cyber Saint was a collaboration with Artisant for my first drop in their platform. I was very happy to have this opportunity to work on a project together with the most representative platform in the digital fashion market. The experience to dress up Eva, their cute avatar, is very interesting as you are giving life and personality to a new drop for Artisant. My inspiration was connections from the moon to the metaverse. I designed special moon boots and a bubble for the head as an accessory. The outfit is a jumpsuit made of unreal bright materials from connections in the metaverse. Artisant is making a very good project with the designers´ collaborations and motivating people to collect Drops to make digital fashion more accessible and well-known.
One of your most heart-touching works was made for Blinks, can you tell us more about it?
Simultaneously with collaborations, I was also preparing my avatar for the Avatar Talent Show in BRIFW event that was held in Brazil in November. Blinks is a digital model with a disability. She loves fashion and she has a superpower that when she blinks she can change the colour of her clothes! The main point of designing Blinks was to bring inclusivity into digital fashion and show how the metaverse can be for all! For the next steps, Blinks has a big potential to grow as a digital influencer, so let’s keep an eye on her!
I also want to congratulate you on the drop at Digital Fashion Week’s platform - The Drips Boutique! How it started and what we should wait for from that collection?
The collaboration with The Drip Boutique was another achievement in my roadmap. They invited me to design 3 new drops for their platform. This invitation came at the right moment to have my first NFT drop and gave me a lot of creativity to design these new special concepts for them. The “Techno Flowers” NFT collection is inspired by technology and nature. From my point of view, this is how flowers should look in the metaverse. For the beginning of the next year, I will unlock some surprise effects in each outfit and also new Snap filters. With this NFT collection, collectors will also have Fancy Special Cards that will be launched in February, 2023.
What is your biggest challenge as a designer?
When I decided to start in the Digital Fashion World, I realised that I had to change my whole career as a fashion designer to a digital designer, which are completely different from one another technically. If you are not an open-minded person that wants to keep learning according to the market demands, you will not be able to join and swim in this new ocean. We are in a market in which not only designers are entering, but most of the professionals involved are from other areas such as engineers, IT, finance, gaming and entrepreneurs from many fields of study who are now the new fashion and apparel designers in the digital world.
What do you seek to add to the world as a creator?
I always liked to see fashion and technology together bringing to the world functionality and proposal. I want to be part of this change that will bring digital fashion with much more concepts and proposals than just one more collection in the world. I am looking for new features for digital clothing as we will be in a digital world where pockets, buttons or bags will not have real functionality. How can we bring functionality to digital clothing in the metaverse?
What do you think is the most powerful thing about digital fashion?
Empower individual creators and independent brands. With digital fashion, they don´t need anymore to wait for all the traditional workflow from the industry to show their work and earn with that. Digital fashion is giving power back to the creators!
What do you think your future will look like 5 years from now?
I hope that more and more people will have consciousness of sustainability and re-consider consuming habits... Not stopping to consume fashion, as we won’t stop to produce fashion too, but instead of all products being physical – there will be also digital and much more creative ones.