Costa Archive was self-initiated. No commission — we picked the brand and built it as the first piece in what we're developing as a digital fashion portfolio.
The goal was to take their signature black jersey and render it properly: actual drape, actual weight, actual fabric movement. Cloth simulation was done in Marvelous Designer, which is now the standard tool for fabric work in the pipeline going forward. A dark garment in 3D is mostly a lighting problem — get the texture and silhouette to read without losing the depth. That's what this one was about.
More pieces like this are in the works. The aim is to give apparel and fashion brands something concrete to look at: what 3D clothing visualization can actually do for campaigns, lookbooks, and product assets, without a physical shoot.
Marvelous Designer gives you physical cloth properties to work with: weight, stiffness, how the fabric bunches under gravity, how it responds to what's underneath. Getting the black jersey to read as jersey rather than generic cloth took several simulation passes. The properties have to be dialled in specifically or the result just looks like a draped mesh. The final sim held up. You can see the natural fold lines and the way the fabric sits on the form.
The goal with the digital fashion portfolio is practical. Give apparel brands something to look at before committing to a physical shoot: colourways, silhouettes, product assets for campaigns. This is the first piece built toward that.