“It’s a love letter to my Filipino heritage,” describing his current digital fashion collection, “a means of verbalizing my multifaceted cultural identity. I’ve travelled across a few islands and just flew back from a trip to Manila. I found myself collecting pieces of inspiration to build the collection, almost like I was picking up pieces of my innate cultural identity.”
Ivan Medrano speaks about how digital world connections makes the life of a creative much more global and inclusive. I’ve always had this vision of myself in a highrise office, surrounded by a team of creative people. I’m dressed in an oversized blazer and my distressed denim pants, working on an editorial. There are annotated magazine issues on my desk, and assistants orbit in front of me back and forth. It’s become my job to create and envision things, and nothing is impossible. That’s what I strive for.”

Focusing on digital fashion to motivate furthermore the idea of transcendence of identities with the help of technological evolution, What inspires you to dive deeper into the virtual space?+Would you like to tell your story on the kind of evolution you have gone through ever since you started? What has changed for you if anything?

I wouldn’t necessarily say my work dives into the ‘virtual space’, in the sense that aestheticism around technology and the virtual world is not my main focus nor a goal. Instead, I’d say I use virtual spaces and digital fashion as vehicles to explore facets of storytelling and empower young artists.
I’m currently working on my fifth season collection, that’s how I organise my work. ‘SEASON THREE: PEACE & LOVE’ explored the dichotomy of romance and violence within the concept of love. ‘SEASON TWO: SURVIVAL’ explored notions of modularity and sustainability in an imagined apocalyptic future. ‘SEASON FOUR: INDEX’ is where I really tried to solidify my design language, outside of digital fashion and metaverse art, but as a contemporary artist. Right now I’m in the research and development stage of ‘SEASON FIVE’, a title in progress.
It’s a love letter to my Filipino heritage, a means of verbalizing my multifaceted cultural identity. I’ve travelled across a few islands and just flew back from a trip to Manila. I found myself collecting pieces of inspiration to build the collection, almost like I was picking up pieces of my innate cultural identity. I was born in Gold Coast, Australia, and went to elementary school in Montreal, Canada. Middle school in Toronto, Highschool in Melbourne. I finished school and went to university in Perth.
I’ve always felt a dissonance with my Filipino heritage. “I’m from ‘here’, my family’s from back there.” I could understand household Tagalog, but I can’t speak it. But ever since moving back, I’ve felt more whole, more content and sure of myself.
That’s my interpretation of the transcendence of identity, how important culture and a sense of belonging is. It’s work, it’s research, exploration. In the past months I’ve lived in the province, explored Manila’s streets, I’ve built parts of myself that didn’t exist before and I’ve fallen in love with where I’m from. This collection is me scribing that feeling, the sense of falling in deep love with one’s culture. Rediscovering identity as a mode of healing.
To answer the last part of that question, the more I aim to make, the more I need to learn. I don’t train myself in 3D because I love digital art, I upskill to bring myself as close to my vision as possible. It’s optimistic, but something I strive for.

With an academic background in Design, I wonder what has been the most challenging part for you in dealing with the constantly evolving space of technology?

The fun thing about 3D art is that, in every corner of the process, is some form of immense suffering. I’m joking. But you need a sense of humor in approaching the ever-constant cycle of technological learning curves. I remember first opening Blender in late 2021 and feeling immobilized as I struggled with managing my viewport (moving around my model.) It’s an area that’s second nature now but that motion of being blocked from progression because of a lack of knowledge is something you encounter a lot, especially once you start collaborating with other artists and clients.

‘Oh, this needs different software.’
‘I need a plug-in to do this faster.’
‘I can’t access this file.’
‘What’s this black stuff on my model?’
‘Background artist needs assets smaller, they’re lagging their software.’
‘Oh no, the colours aren’t consistent across renders.’

Navigating client needs and project briefs is already a balancing act, I studied Visual and Spatial Design at Edith Cowan University, Western Australia, so I had a grasp of what to expect once I started freelancing. However, throwing in the plethora of software and devices people work with these days makes the whole thing that much more of, what you could call, a learning process.

While imagining the future of fashion with digital avatars and products I wonder what future you imagine for our tangible life simultaneously, Do you hold fear for something in regards to what our life is becoming physically?

There’s a clear divide between digital and physical fashion. Our relationship with clothing is so tangible and physically intimate, I can’t currently imagine how digital fashion would seamlessly integrate into our physical lives. I mainly view digital fashion as a catalyst for storytelling, a more accessible means of engaging in fashion making. In the future, I hope to see more digital fashion designers from marginalised backgrounds. The socioeconomically disadvantaged, those without access to fashion facilities like studios, and those who can’t afford sewing machines and supplies. I want it to be what digital art is, a medium where a creative is empowered to fulfil a vision without constraint.
Others might harness fear as we move into a ‘phygital’ lifestyle. All my work meetings have been on either Zoom or Teams. I’ve noticed I’ve been buying less and less physical clothing as I express myself more through my digital creations. However, I see our growing respect and integration for virtual spaces as something that holds a lot of hope. Hope for artists of colour, artists segregated by distance. The Metaverse is not just an oasis to escape to, but a gateway of mass globalisation and limitless collaboration. A bombshell of new opportunities.

Is fashion art for you, digital art, considering your medium and its expressiveness?

This question does boggle me sometimes. Whenever people inquire as to whether fashion is art or not, it’s usually on the implication that art and art alone is capable of being interpersonal, expressive, a catalyst for connection. Fashion, and digital fashion, are also capable of exploring such ideas.
However, I’m very fluid in how I describe my work, as the border between digital fashion, fashion, and art seems so unclear within public discourses. The only way I can explain my view of it at the moment is how I think a shirt can be made of cotton, polyester, wool, and pixels, in the form of a digital fashion garment. I see digital fashion as a subcategory of fashion itself, not something of distinct separation.
But I will acknowledge there is a great sense of novelty in creating a digital fashion render. I’d say so stressing the creation of the digital model wearing the garment, and the environment it inhabits. I usually 3D scan my models using their profile images, as seen in my work for ‘SEASON FOUR: INDEX.” In this way, I can also argue that there are some aspects of my work that can be oriented towards photography. Capturing not one stagnant frame of a pose, but a whole three-dimensional mesh of a being. Perhaps digital fashion needs to be a medium of its own, liberated from the expectations and speculations of other forms.

What drives you to keep going though we are still in a niche spectrum of consumption and large benefits are available in a little small spectrum in terms of revenue (please correct me if I'm wrong)?

I’ve never felt as empowered as I do now with any other medium. Studying art, design, and fashion throughout school, I’ve always felt roadblocked. There was always a dissonance between what I wanted to create and the capacity of the form I was working with. So I really found myself at home artistically in digital fashion. That’s what keeps me going, knowing that I have the ability to fully execute a vision without constraint.
The fact that digital fashion is still niche in consumption does play in our favour. Most of my clients are physical fashion designers who’d like digital counterparts of their work or artists musicians who want to be expressed virtually. Because things are so new it gives us a lot of room to define our own terms, our own prices and rules. I usually oscillate between passion projects and client work to support myself whilst giving myself opportunities for growth. It was never really about the money for me, so I was rarely ever discouraged by the small pool of revenue available in this sector. However, I am finding more and more financial support from my work and hope to get to a position where I can work this way full-time.

Where do you see yourself going from here besides catering to fashion designers and building on digital fashion shows?

I’d love to curate. To be an editor of some sort one day. To tell larger stories in the form of publications alongside other artists. I’ve always had this vision of myself in a highrise office, surrounded by a team of creative people. I’m dressed in an oversized blazer and my distressed denim pants, working on an editorial. There are annotated magazine issues on my desk, and assistants orbit in front of me back and forth. It’s become my job to create and envision things, and nothing is impossible. It’s optimistic, but something I strive for.

We are amongst the ones who are anti-fashion fashion people. I like the fact that you are building personalities that are empowering and something to enjoy as a stimulant. Please tell us about the kind of inclusivity you are working on and looking forward to incorporating more, considering the market is growing with each passing moment.

As I mentioned, I see metaverse art as a platform to empower marginalised creatives, especially young artists of colour. Our current modes of exhibiting work and celebrating art are polluted by ethnographic curation practices.
People of colour are often pigeonholed by institutions, pushed into the idea that the most important stories we have to tell are stories of cultural suffering. The migrant experience. Isolation in assimilation. Refugee trauma. Being bullied because of how you looked or what food your mom packed you for lunch. These were the stories I’d see whenever I’d visit graduate exhibitions back in High School. Again and again, every year, white walls of young artists expressing how defeated they were because of their cultural identity. This trend in curation, which is so potent among high school and University gallery shows, perpetuates the idea that the most self-actualised act an artist of colour can perform is tp use their platform to talk about racial trauma. However I disagree.
When I think of inclusivity, I think of diversity. The empowerment of identity and the unique stories of the individual. I believe the metaverse, as a decentralised public platform, is a catalyst for change in how we engage with, curate, experience, and create art. I practice this by being inclusive of my own identity as a Filipino, celebrating everything I find beautiful about my culture. My cultural identity is more than hurdles and the trials I experience. My work urges other people to announce the same. To use the metaverse and meta-art as a vehicle of dismantling value systems that put artists of colour in a box. And I hope, piece by piece, artist by artist, we can build a community that values cultural integrity and empowers this kind of cultural celebration.