I get my creative nutrition from art, music and popular culture

Daniel Avakian is an Australian-born and internationally renowned women’s and men’s designer. Known for impeccable tailoring and a contemporary approach to design, Daniel’s designs are carefully curated to anchor the modern customer’s wardrobe. Offering both value and versatility, every piece is designed for people with an eye for quality and detail. He has dressed many Australian and international celebrities and Influencers such as Rita Ora, Charlie Sheen, Jennifer Hawkins, Sophie Monk, Mel B, Christie Whelan Browne, Tess Haubrich, and many more. In an Interview with Fibre2Fashion, the designer discusses about the inspiration behind his collection, Real-Time Fashion, NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens), and his projects.

Fibre2Fashion: What intrigued you towards the fashion Industry and motivated you to start your own label?

Daniel Avakian:

I was always interested in art and business and ended up studying fine arts at university when I finished high school; however, I dropped out of it! My girlfriend at the time suggested me about fashion design. I saw I could combine my love of art and business, and so sometime at the end of 1999 I decided to enroll in the Whitehouse Institute of Design in Sydney, and the rest is history.

F2F: Where do you get your creative nutrition? What fashion do you follow?

DA:

I get my creative nutrition from art, music and popular culture. I’m a big movie buff and a lover of beautiful art, and so I draw my inspiration from these mediums and convert, for example, one of my favourite films into a collection.

F2F: Please walk us through the concept of Real-Time Fashion and how can consumers have access to it?

DA:

At this stage, the Real Time Fashion (RTF) concept provides B2B and B2C services producing virtual product developments and product presentations including metaverse ready collaterals.

F2F: Can you provide us some information about the development of NFTs and how virtual retail might alter the fashion business in the near future?

DA:

In terms of the fashion NFTs that we create, we develop amazing NFT art and photo-realistic product/garment designs which renders onto a hyper-realistic animated avatars. Our team can also create a true-to-life 3-D virtual retail environment/s (be it luxe, street, futuristic, etc) and place the photo-realistic hyper-real animated avatar/s into these environments to create a unique, interesting, immersive and interactive shopping CX – all online and thus more convenient for consumers.

F2F: Could you share some insights on your participation in the upcoming NYFW? How are you going to present your collection and what new can be expected?

DA:

Daniel Avakian's participation at NYFW Spring Summer 2023 collections will take the US/global audience into the future with the Daniel Avakian NYFW debut via a digital edit of ‘The Tears in the Rain’ collection presented at After Pay Australian Fashion Week in Sydney in May 2022. The NYFW Spring Summer 2023 will be the first fashion show to feature virtual models and offer a ‘real time fashion’ retail experience on an international runway.

F2F: As seen in your collection, could you please elaborate on why the price of NFTs are higher than the actual physical outfits?

DA:

Today NFTs, when compared to actual physical products, are often perceived/presented as ‘artworks’ rather than fashion products and can be both significantly more expensive due to:

F2F: Tell us about your few favourite projects?

DA:

We have been involved in a few exciting projects recently.

F2F: How would you relate past and present fashion trends?

DA:

I would say that social media has provided a very unique platform to society. Being able to express yourself on social media visually has been prolific in bringing back past fashion trends into the present, but also requiring global trends and inspirations (as promoted by influencers and celebrities) to be available in real-time – and the only way to achieve real-time fashion is through virtual/digital fashion.

F2F: Any advice that you would like to share with aspirants trying to break into digital fashion and the metaverse world?

DA:

For aspiring designers, trying to break into the digital fashion and the metaverse world now is the most amazing time to be involved. We are at the starting point of a limitless future where digital/virtual fashion can be created and communicated to the world in days rather than months – not just as metaverse-ready assets, but also ricocheting back into the real world – and as such will create limitless opportunities for innovation and designers’ creativity.