Clothes That Don’t Even Exist

The online metaverse is already here and like it or not, we're certainly going to continue spending more time in virtual worlds. But one question pops up: What are you going to wear? 

For most people, the idea of buying clothes that don’t exist is a conceptual leap too far. 

Introducing digital clothing, the latest fashion trend.

Digital clothing isn’t made of fabric or anything tangible. The garments are made from pixels rather than textiles, using computer technologies and 3D software. It means you’ll never wear an item of digital clothing in real life. 

Instead, you can browse an online selection of digital clothes and order something you like. Depending on the retailer, you can either send a picture of yourself to a team of 3D designers who will digitally fit the item of clothing on your photo, or you can download and manipulate the files yourself using 3D software, so it’s ready to post on Instagram and elsewhere. 

Soon it’ll likely become a way to dress your avatar when interacting in online games and meeting places, all potentially while reclining in sweat pants in your own home.

British influencer 27-year-old Daniella Loftus (right) sees so much promise that last month she gave up her job with a fashion consultancy to devote herself full-time to her website, This Outfit Does Not Exist.

Her Instagram shows the potential of virtual clothing that doesn’t need to obey the laws of physics – from a shimmering silver liquid pant suit with tentacles, to a wobbling pink creation with lasers firing out of her bustier. 

“Within the digital world, we can go completely crazy. We can wear a dress made of water or have lights everywhere and change your textile according to your mood”, says Amber Slooten, the co-founder of The Fabricant, which sold the first ever digital-only dress in May 2019 for $9,500!

Outfits on digital fashion store DressX range from $25 (RM104) hats to strange jellyfish-like dresses for hundreds of dollars. 

“Every brand in the future will be on board with digital fashion”, said DressX co-founder Daria Shapovalova. Their own research says 15 percent of customers are doing so for Instagram posts, and almost a quarter found it satisfied their need for a new item of clothing. 

“You don’t necessarily need physicality to experience the thrill of wearing an extraordinary garment”, said The Fabricant's Michaela Larosse. 

“We will all have a digital self, we’ll have an avatar and you’ll be able to communicate something about yourself, who you are, what you’re interested in, through the iteration of your avatar”. 

Loftus is clear that digital fashion is not yet for everyone – and may never be. 

“I don’t know if a lot of the people who do this stuff online actually want to meet people in person. I think that a lot of their needs and desires can be satisfied online”, she said. 

It may also prove a great leveller – a way for anti-social people to (almost literally) shed their skin and adopt another. 

Gala Marija Vrbanic, creative director at digital fashion brand Tribute, says: “We truly believe this is something that is going to shape the future of fashion”. 

Hey, life is short – so, why not dress up? Fashion in real life or virtually, is a method of self-expression, after all. You don't have to settle for average.

LEGO Meals

LEGO equals creativity. With their bricks, the possibilities are truly endless.

LEGO Malaysia had shared these appetising #BuildOfTheWeek creations by brick artists Xylvie Wong, Gavin Foo, Eugene Tan, and Andy Goh and they're just delightfully cute! 

My favorite three are shown below: 

The nasi lemak is by My Little Brick Shop's co-founder Xylvie Wong. 

Speaking to SAYS, she reveals that she was inspired to make nasi lemak after plucking out all the pieces from a LEGO minifigure torso and they ended up looking like 'rice'. 

"I absolutely love nasi lemak. I can eat it all day every day. So I thought, what better 'rice' to build?" 

Gavin Foo, who once built a LEGO replica of Singapore's Merlion, came up with this plate of chicken rice, with chilli, ginger, and soup on the side. Looks real tasty, TBH.

And satay and kuih were built by Eugene Tan and Andy Goh.

Back to the Office

Effective Friday, Johor will move to Phase 3 and Pahang to Phase 4 under the NRP.

The Malaysian government’s “recovery” plan is proceeding accordingly even as Covid cases remain in the four-digit bracket (based on the daily numbers for the last four days) and which means life is getting back to near normal. 

And office workers are returning to their respective workplaces. Assuming, of course, they’ve not lost their jobs and/or their companies are still in business. 

But the fact that you’ve been in WFH mode for so long, it won’t be easy to get back into “office” mode again, as this “Back to the Office: When Meetings are No Longer Virtual” clip illustrates:

  

It’s by Foil Arms and Hog, an Irish sketch comedy group comprising Sean Finegan, Conor McKenna and Sean Flanagan. The group performs on TV, radio, the stage and online. 

FYI, the trio write, shoot and edit a new sketch every week in their office, releasing it for YouTube, Facebook and Instagram on IGTV.

Walt Disney Co and Scarlett Johansson (left) have resolved their legal dispute stemming from the release of her Marvel superhero movie Black Widow, the company and the actor said jointly two Thursdays ago. 

The terms of their settlement, however, were not disclosed. 

Johansson had sued Disney in July, accusing the company of breaching her contract when it offered the movie on streaming at the same time it was playing in theaters.

Facebook's 6-Hour Outage

On Monday, Facebook and its sibling sites WhatsApp and Instagram dropped off the Internet for nearly six hours. 

It sucks big time because I’m dependent on two of these social media and messaging tools for my World Speech Day communication, WhatsApp especially and Facebook. 

Outage tracking service Downdetector said on their website that "billions of users" had been impacted by "services being entirely offline". 

The incident, which Facebook blamed on an internal technical issue, exposed our almost absolute dependence on these communication tools in everyday life. 

Even inside Facebook, the outage broke nearly all of the internal systems employees use to communicate and work. Some employees told The Verge they resorted to talking through their work-provided Outlook email accounts, though employees can’t receive emails from external addresses. Employees who were logged into work tools such as Google Docs and Zoom before the breakdown can still use those, but any employee who needs to log in with their work email was blocked. 

Anyway, Facebook explained that the service interruption was due to a configuration issue. It is claimed that the company’s backbone connection between data centers shut down during routine maintenance, which caused the DNS servers to go offline. These two factors combined in making the problem more difficult to fix, and they help explain why services were offline for so long.

In fact, this is the worst outage for Facebook since a 2019 incident took their site offline for more than 24 hours, as the downtime hit hardest on the small businesses and creators who rely on these services for their income. Not just them but also everybody else whose sad lives revolve only around social media!

Givenchy's Noose Necklace at Paris Fashion Week

French fashion house Givenchy came under heavy fire at the Paris Fashion Week show (September 27-October 05, 2021). 

Givenchy's Spring/Summer 2022 ready-to-wear collection by creative director Matthew Williams (left) in collaboration with American artist Josh Smith on Sunday was a display of artistic extravagance. The collection, and Williams' debut show in front of an audience, featured an array of styles that didn't necessarily seem to be a part of the same collection but the range offered something for everyone. 

The collection included monochromatic ensembles, thigh-high boots, plaid, ruffles, peplum, exaggerated shoulders, corsets, acid wash pants, mesh, sequins, muted hues of mint green, lavender and yellow, alongside bright reds, acid green, and pieces, courtesy of Smith (right) that showed off busy graffiti-style art featuring the Grim Reaper, Halloween-esque imagery, clowns, bones and more. 

Not to mention the accessories that seemed to be designed to evoke shock: a milk carton bag, a bottle clutch, barbed wire rings, and definitely one design that Williams' could have been skipped as the collection was sure to get enough buzz without it as well – neck accessories that had knot designs bearing a striking resemblance to nooses. 

Three models wore gold and silver versions of the accessory at the said show. 

It comes two years after Burberry said sorry for a hoodie featuring a noose. 

When the Burberry debacle erupted in 2019, one of their models, Liz Kennedy, wrote in a long post on Instagram: "Suicide is not fashion". 

Fashion Instagram account Diet Prada wrote: "You'd think the industry would've learned not to put things that resemble nooses around a model's neck". 

Honestly, in which world is having a noose hanging on a woman's neck considered as fashion, #Givenchy? 

Lisy Roxby, a representative of the UK-based suicide prevention charity Papyrus, told The Guardian: “Those who have a personal connection to suicide, whether this be their own experiences or having lost a loved one, can be triggered by such imagery and brands have a responsibility to ensure that they are not causing harm to their audience”.

I Drank Too Much

Flo & Joan (left) – a name they took from their grandmothers, who shared the sisterly bond the comedians present on stage – is an English comedy music act consisting of sisters, Rosie and Nicola Dempsey. 

Check out their most acclaimed song "I drank too much", which recounts a fictitious night drinking with a non-existent friend Dino:

 

Flo & Joan's first taste of fame came in early 2017 when their Youtube video “The 2016 Song” went viral:

 

I don't think 2016 had stood out as a year where “it’s been a struggle” – as the duo said – but even if it was, that was nothing as compared to these last two years or so. 

I suppose the most displeasing event that year would probably be the US elections in November when Donald Trump won the electoral college vote by 304 to 227, and thereby the presidency. 

(Trump took the oath of office on January 20, 2017). 

This is the demagogue (right) who had pledged to “make America great again”, and promised to create millions of new jobs; punish American companies that exported jobs overseas; repeal Obama’s signature legislative achievement, the Affordable Care Act; revive the US coal industry; reduce the influence of lobbyists in Washington, DC (“drain the swamp”); withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change; impose tariffs on countries that allegedly engaged in trade practices that were unfair to the country; construct a wall along the US-Mexico border to prevent illegal immigration from Latin America; and ban immigration by Muslims. 

The world was never the same again since he became president. Sure, the world was already in a mess but Trump made it positively worse.

Note on the 2 videos: Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing.

Burger King's Japanese Curry Whopper

Burger King Malaysia is bringing a taste of Japan to Malaysia – it’s the Japanese Curry Whopper! 

Since one of my favorite Japanese chow is the raisu karē (literally 'rice curry'), there’s no reason I wouldn’t like the latest limited-time offering from the fast-food restaurant chain. 

Instead of the familiar rice, we have BK’s signature 5” flame-grilled beef patty that is wrapped by a soft, toasted sesame seed bun, and accompanied by toppings of American cheese, fresh onions, crisp lettuce, creamy mayonnaise and a dusting of pepper. And not forgetting, lavish lashings of karē. 

I ordered a set meal and even as I took my first chomp, I could feel the sauce with its unmistakable subtle spice and comforting flavours burst in my mouth. It even dripped out from the bap I was holding and the liquid made little yellow ochre splotches on the plate. 

I think, oishii (おいしい) is the appropriate adjective to describe my experience – and yeah, there's no doubt about it because it’s really great-tasting! Itadakimasu! 

I’m more of a burger person – but for chicken lovers, there’s also the Japanese Curry Chick’N Crisp set. 

Psst, the promo picture sure looks a lot better than the real thing though.

Anyway, I’m still happy with it because I requested for them to be more generous with the karē sauce. And I believe they obliged. I don't think I was exaggerating when I say it was sloshing around in my mouth the whole time I was devouring the Whopper! Well, it sure felt like it! Best lah!

No Time To Die Smashes Box Office Records

Daniel Craig’s final outing as 007 has smashed UK box office records, grossing more on its opening weekend than any other film in the history of the James Bond franchise, and has become the biggest movie of the year after only four days in cinemas. 

“No Time To Die”, which received its world public premiere in the UK at midnight on Wednesday, has also broken international pandemic box office records, making $119 million (£88 million) in the 54 markets where the film has launched to date. This makes it the first title from a Hollywood studio to crack $100 million without opening in China – the largest box office market in the world in 2020 with revenue of $3 billion – since the pandemic began more than 18 months ago. 

In the UK and Ireland, Bondmania fuelled almost £26 million in ticket sales over its first four days as fans awaiting the thrice-delayed film – “No Time To Die” was originally scheduled to premiere in April last year – headed to cinemas in record numbers. 

The film’s three-day opening weekend, from Friday through to Sunday night, hit a record £21 million, according to the UK Cinema Association. This makes it more successful than “Skyfall” and “Spectre”, the two biggest films in the history of the 59-year-old franchise, which each managed £20 million at the UK box office on their three-day opening weekends. 

Universal Pictures, which is releasing the film alongside MGM, said that so far internationally “No Time To Die” is performing in line with “Skyfall”, the most successful Bond film of all time which grossed $1.1 billion globally. However, it is tracking 17% below “Spectre”, which went on to make $880 million globally. 

The next box office test for “No Time To Die” will be its big launch on October 08 in the US, followed by China on October 29.

A Day Dedicated to Children

Dr. Seus says “A person’s a person no matter how small”. 

And that young person should be given the opportunity to speak – he or she has ideas and thoughts to share too. 

That explains why we are bringing you WSD 2021 World Children’s Day. On November 20.

After all, children are the world’s most valuable resources and its best hope for the future.

#unexpectedvoices #worldspeechday #sabahbolehbah