H&M Foundation: The Billion Dollar Collection

'The Billion Dollar Collection' is an innovative campaign launched today by non-profit H&M Foundation, as part of its Global Change Award supporting early-stage innovation and ideas that can make the fashion industry circular. To highlight a selection of these startups, this campaign showcases them in a new way - through a unique digital-only fashion collection and catwalk show, designed by French creative director Pauline Chardin and created in hyper-realistic CGI by Mackevision, part of Accenture Interactive. Each garment in the collection comes with its own price tag, some up to $120 million, reflecting the estimated support each company believes it needs to achieve scale for its disruptive innovations. The details of each startup – associated with a unique garment – are featured in a digital Billion Dollar Collection Lookbook. A campaign film demonstrates how Mackevision breathed life and movement into the collection, through the creation of a one-of-a-kind avatar to wear and showcase the digital garments. Purposefully androgenous, the key requirement for the avatar was that it shouldn't be based on any real-life human being. Working from a selection of 3D scans, Mackevision worked in close exchange with the designer and the H&M Foundation to carefully adapt facial features and details to achieve a natural result. A huge undertaking, the project took just over five months for the studio to complete. The collection, meticulously created in exquisite detail, is characterised by asymmetrical elements, trinket-like finishing, non-standard colors and bold volumes. For its creation, Mackevision used a complex software ecosystem, including Marvelous Designer, Houdini, Maya, vRay and Substance Painter, and worked closely with real-life designer Pauline Chardin on the final look of the garments. To make the animation feel authentic, the team at Mackevision also used motion capture technology to demonstrate the various garments.