Design Map · Eindhoven
Corruption.zprj & The Archive of Digital Fashion
Graduation project by Victoria (VAM) McGuire at Design Academy Eindhoven, 2026. Shown during Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven on Design Map, location F5.
‘Corruption.zprj & The Archive of Digital Fashion’ physically manifests the fragility and vulnerability of digital fashion to technical decay. Digital fashion has been “the future of the industry” for the last 10-20 years, denying it a past even as its history is already disappearing with platforms shutting down, companies pivoting and digital works disappearing. Drawing on interviews with digital fashion practitioners and McGuire’s experience as an early digital fashion designer, the project demands recognition of the practice's past and present through the creation of an archive. Digital men’s dress shirt patterns are manipulated, intentionally damaged in acts of ‘performative corruption’, and then reconstructed in physical form. The resulting garments occupy an uncanny space between the physical and the digital. The process creates a tangible metaphor for digital failure, demonstrating how brittle digital fashion work can be while underlining the necessity of situating the practice in the now.