Brave New World

One-on-One with Roei Derhi, Placebo DFH founder and creative director

When you break it down, fashion is all about empowering people to express themselves and embrace their deepest urges for creativity. Traditionally, we understood fashion as something to be worn in the physical space, but the world is changing fast, and with it, people, especially Gen Z and Y, are spending more and more time in the virtual worlds.

This fact hasn’t changed the basic desire for expressing one’s individuality, and the market for virtual fashion is booming, and with it, a new wave of fashion designers who are pioneering and reimagining the digital landscape.

Roei Derhi is one such designer. Founder and Creative Director of the Placebo Digital Fashion House (DFH) brand, he unveiled his Meta-Genesis collection at Kornit Fashion Week LA. While Placebo DHF’s designs are created exclusively for the digital realm, primarily the gaming world, what makes this collection so unique is that it was the first time that the swatches were first physically produced on Kornit’s Presto MAX and then scanned (unlike the traditional process of digital design followed by physical printing) 

The collection was created with only 1.5 meters of fabric and no water (besides what the designer himself consumed).

For Derhi, an Israeli-born designer based in Stockholm, who also works for H&M, digital fashion is not only about envisioning a sci-fi future where we stroll the cities with AR glasses and virtual outfits, or wear custom designs on our avatars — it’s about understanding the fashion designer’s responsibility in protecting the planet and creating sustainable fashion that doesn’t pollute the environment.

In this regard, the collaboration with FashionTech innovators, Kornit Digital, was a fruitful and inspiring meeting of the minds, where technology and innovation fuels creativity towards a common goal — a more mindful approach to production.

Derhi and the Placebo DHF brand don’t take anything for granted. Everything is questioned and reimagined. Not only where and how fashion will be worn, but by who. Gender boundaries are explored, a mix of masculinity and femininity, new silhouettes and asymmetric shapes. Derhi brings unparalleled optimism to his designs, a world without borders, where science and technology bring people together into tribes, celebrating the human spirit and embracing the future.

We still don’t know how the future will look, but we can be sure the journey will be an exciting one.

For the Meta-Genesis collection Derhi collaborated with Joseph Mizrachi Eshine for music production, and even best-selling author and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari lent his voice and text for the soundtrack.

Click below to see the Meta-Genesis Collection.

PLACEBO Live @ Kornit Fashion Week LA 2021.mp4 from Kornit Digital on Vimeo.