Gaming has been a big business for decades but, in recent years, it has made a shift into the mainstream and become an important part of contemporary culture. Every day, tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of people pick up a pad or sit at a keyboard and mouse and have fun playing a wide range of games on consoles, PCs, and online.
Gamers are becoming an important and influential group of people, especially online, and they are beginning to influence the fashion industry and create whole new clothing fashion trends of their own. Here is our simple guide to some of the biggest trends in gaming fashion.
Comfy Clothes Are Now Couture
One of the most important factors in gaming fashion is comfort. When you are playing video games for long periods of time, you want to be comfortable and free from the distractions that uncomfortable clothes can cause, like itching. Many gamers are now streaming their play online via services like Twitch, which has led to a demand for comfortable but fashionable clothes, and their role as cultural influencers has made this demand surge in recent years as their viewers want to wear what they see their favourite streamers are wearing.
There is now a huge range of comfy couture clothing coming from many mainstream fashion labels. Many new labels are also appearing to help satisfy the demand for comfortable fashion and this sector of the fashion industry is growing every year.
Wearing the Game
One of the biggest trends in gaming fashion is to wear clothing that is branded in the game you are playing, or in a retro title that you have a lot of love for. Many gamers are wearing clothing that celebrates their favourite games like Mario, Pokémon or Resident Evil. This type of clothing isn’t limited to t-shirts or hoodies either. The range of clothing that incorporates gaming titles is growing all the time, from leather jackets to pyjamas and shoes and hats too.
It is not just games that are getting the fashion treatment either. Some game peripherals like classic joypads and joysticks are appearing on clothing and there are even nods to classic casino games like poker, blackjack and roulette.
PHOTO CREDIT: MARK ABRAMSON/BFA
The High-Tech Clothes of the Future
Technology has slowly been making its way into clothing for a long time now. Global Hypercolor was a brand of t-shirts released in the early nineties that changed colour when exposed to heat. Technology in clothing goes even further back if you count the Nintendo Power Glove.
Technology is creeping into clothing again and gamers are taking notice. There are hoodies and jackets available with Bluetooth headphones or speakers integrated into the hood, and some t-shirts have been trialled with programmable screens on the chest that allow the wearer to display any brand, picture, or message that they want on a shirt. Every gamer should expect more tech in clothing in the coming years, and they will no doubt be amongst the earliest adopters of the latest in high tech clothing. Perhaps there will even be a return of peripherals like the Power Glove, but probably not!
Gaming fashion is a fast-growing sector of the industry and will become even more influential in the coming years. How long will it be until gamers start strutting their stuff on the catwalks of Paris and Milan? Not long, probably.
