Pixels and Passion: Zoha Khan’s Journey to Digital Design

Hi Zoha! Thank you so much for chatting with us. Can you please introduce yourself and provide a brief overview of your background and journey into the world of digital fashion?

Hi! Thank you so much for having me. It took a lot of experimenting. I am a Graduate of Fashion Marketing and Merchandising, so I did not study fashion design. I don't know all of that. I didn't even know that digital fashion design was a field to begin with, but I was doing fashion illustrations, and I was very keen on continuing it as a career.

Back in 2021, I was hired as a digital fashion designer for my first job. I didn't know what it was about. I didn't know what to do. I was like, oh, sounds interesting, Let's do it. I quickly self taught myself all the software.

And that's how I was like, hey, I really love this and I really want to do it, but I don't want to quit on fashion illustrations because that's how and why I started, so I started mixing the two fields together. 

Everything that you see that I do is more like a fashion illustration, and it's something you could put on top of a magazine. I have a marketing background, so I see everything as a way to sell, it should have a story, it should have a purpose, a reason.

What initially sparked your interest in digital fashion, and how has it shaped your creative process and career trajectory?

I think every digital fashion designer that I know, once we're in the field, we love it so much that we do not want to do anything else. So for me, I know that for the next probably 20 years or so, you'll see me doing digital fashion. You'll see me do fashion films, you'll see me doing everything digital, with a touch of passion in it.

Can you share a particular breakthrough moment or turning point in your journey that has had a significant impact on your work?

I think it was a point when I was merging fashion illustrations and digital fashion together. I did this post on Gucci, it was their Gucci at Adidas collection. That was probably the second or third time that I posted something that I did apart from work, because you can't post work that much. I got a lot of appreciation from Gucci and I got a lot of eyes on my work, and I’m thinking, “Okay, okay, I'm doing something people are seeing, and people like the people I look upon and I appreciate and really respect. They're liking my work.”

What inspires and influences your creative vision and design aesthetic?

I've actually thought about that a lot, like, what is my design aesthetic? Because most of the time you're like, I love nature or I love music or this or that. But then I thought, what is my style? 

Okay, the way I work is [with brands] I get in the nitty gritty of everything - I need to know about something to be inspired and create something. For example, if there's a brand that I need to get to know, what's their brand personality? What emotions are they communicating to their audience? What's their color palette and everything? What kind of clothes do they have? What is it that people like? 

From there, I think about what people would want from them and what the brand would be expecting from me. From there I see, okay, what is it that I like to design? Which is mostly just creating stuff that is pretty. It can be futuristic but I also like things that are kind of challenging and has a lot of detail attached to it. Everything is very detailed. 

There's also a lot of story building that goes behind the piece. So, for example, my latest fashion film that I made for Digital Fashion Week in February, it was also nominated for the Best Web3 Fashion Film at the Fashion Film Festival in Milano, was focused on a cause and very South Asian inspired.

The topic that I was hitting was the identity crisis felt by South Asian immigrants, or any immigrant, could relate to. When I was making that, I thought, okay, I have an identity crisis if I look at my degree. I feel that I do not belong to this field because my job experience is very diverse. I've done graphic design, I've done marketing, I've done illustrations, I've done a lot of things. So that kind of gives me the imposter syndrome. 

But then I was like, okay, this does not have to be about me. It could be towards the wider audience. A lot of people should be able to relate to it. And then I looked at some of my friends, some of my family members, and a lot of my immigrant friends and family members have this identity crisis. And I really wanted to direct my story towards them and dedicate it to them.

The story means a lot to me. Could be a cause, could be a feeling, could be an emotion, could be just looking at art and feeling good about it. I just want to create things that make people happy, make them feel, make them question a little, maybe rebel a little.

My back end work is very maximalist to the detail. I need to get everything sorted. But then when you look at the work, it's very minimal. You look at it and you probably don't even think about the story unless you read the captions or ask me about it.

How do you approach the intersection of fashion and technology in your work? Are there specific principles or values that guide your creative process?

I have to be bored to find good ideas. I have to be alone, left alone, unbothered. I have this mindset that you should be able to be inspired by a rock, by leaves, by a person, by feeling anything around. It doesn't matter if you're in your room all day, you work remotely, you can still find inspiration. A lot of my friends come to me and they're like, we don't find inspiration, we don't know what to do about it. You need to change your mindset. You need to start looking at things beyond what they are. You need to give them more attention. You need to open your mind a bit. So when it comes to getting inspiration, it mostly comes for human emotions.

Sometimes when I have that blockage and I don't know what to do because we're all human, we do get to that phase, I go back to history. I go back to the history books and I see what is it that people used to do and what it is that we're doing right now and see how can I merge these two together. And sometimes, most of the time, I do find my inspiration from there. Otherwise, podcasts are your best friend. They're mine.

When I'm working and I have a podcast going in the background and my friends are like, “How the hell do you do that? We get bored.” Even when I'm eating, I have to see some kind of tutorial going on. 

Can you highlight one of your most memorable projects or collaborations and the story behind it? What made it particularly special or challenging?

I think the most memorable one would be a work collaboration while I was on my job in the corporate world. It was going to be the first digital collection ever done within the brand that I was working on. It was one of the first brands in Pakistan to be using digital fashion, since we use it mostly for the sampling and the production perspective, most technical terms, but this time we were going to do it for modeling and using it to show people that this is actually what goes on behind the scenes. And I was like, okay, that's challenging. I love challenges. 

I made all the textile prints, all the set designing, all the clothes and stuff. I handled all the production for it also, so it's kind of all me. But nobody knows that before it was selected, it was rejected three times.

The first time, I made 15 dresses. 15 looks. I went to my boss, who then went to her boss. And then he's like, this is shit. I don't want that. I was like, oh, no it's okay. I'm going to try again. I'm going to try. I'm going to do this.

I did it the second time. Then they were like, It looks good now. And then she's like, “Let me show it to my boss again.” And then he came in like, “I think you better change this, and this and this.

We want these kinds of prints. Maybe change the prints a little.” He selected a few of the articles from there, but we needed more. So I was like, okay, I'm going to give it another shot. 

They're like, okay, I don't like this. The first collection that you showed me was a lot better. Okay, let me do it again. Then I did it again and they were like, “Yeah, it looks fine over there.” Thank God, I did it.

It wasn't even that easy because handling the production of the factory people and then checking everything and also before the marketing stuff, because I had to do all the marketing part also this time. I had to give the media team all the editorial images. You could say, yeah, it took a lot of time for rendering. And then somebody wouldn't like the lighting. Somebody wouldn't like the pose. Somebody wouldn't like something.

I got through it and it's an achievement moment for me because I did it all alone. After doing that, I thought, I think I'm going to resign. I think I can do a lot by myself. 

I felt like it was a very empowering moment for me when I did that collection. So after that, again, I did have a lot of good big collaborations in my bag. That was my first big thing and that was what gave me the confidence. That collection is very close to my heart.

How do you see fashion technology contributing to a more sustainable and responsible future for the industry? Are there any specific initiatives or practices you are passionate about?

I think because a lot of digital fashion comes with a digital footprint, everything is recorded and people are more conscious about what they're buying and what they're going to do with it when they buy it. That is something really good for us as the fashion industry, the makers, and also being potential buyers in the business. Of course, there's a production point of view, there's a lot of production positives in terms of sustainability. A lot of influencers could really use digital fashion, even the marketing perspective.

It's also really interesting and amazing to see how people are accepting it now. People are getting their hands on it, they're getting more information about it. A lot of people who are not from the industry are now trying to understand and learn of the amazing people in the digital fashion circle, like Daniella Loftus is really amazing. I really look up to her and the way she's just shaking the industry. She's the kind of person who is paving paths for young designers like me to follow that path. She's one of the people who pioneered all of this.

There's a lot of community building to all of this too.

There are not a lot of people in digital fashion design. We're so less that everybody kind of knows each other in some way or the other. I think digital fashion is here to stay.

So I’m very thankful that I did make that decision when I did to shift my career and focus more on this because this is definitely something we see big brands like Gucci, Tommy Hilfiger, Louis Vuitton - they're shifting towards digital fashion and they see something in it. Of course we did too, which is why we shifted. But when these big names come into the industry and they start doing what we do, it also gives us kind of the boost and kind of the verification that, yeah, what we thought was right.

What challenges or obstacles have you encountered in your journey, and how have you overcome them?

It's mostly software related because there's a lot of software that you have to integrate in the pipeline to execute what everybody sees online. Since there's a lot of updates going on and a lot of new software coming in, we need to try out each one. That really takes a lot of time and energy also, just to know what the software is about and try it out for yourself. I do not have a tech background and I was never a gaming girl, so I don't know shit about it, I'm going to be honest. It was a lot for me to learn initially but knowing which software to use and when is such a big power move.

People who do that and they do it effectively and efficiently, I really respect them because this is something that a lot of people undermine and they overlook. A skill that is very important to know is what to use and how to use it.

As far as collaborations and everything goes, the processes are usually very smooth since everybody is very open to collaborations these days and they've already done a lot of them in the past. So it's a very smooth sailing process. 

If you see somebody from the music industry and you see an artist imagine them collaborating and what kind of magic they could create together. In the field and out of field collaborations are so, so important to grow you as a person and also look at your craft in a different way because you're all creatives, but you're from different fields. I love out of field collaboration. 

How do you envision the way we create, consume, and interact with fashion in the future?

The Apple Vision pro is coming. The world is moving very fast, and I'm so, so excited about it. At the same time, we're going to see so many innovations.

Imagine this is just the start and we're already loving it so much, and I cannot imagine how it's going to be in the next one year. Everything is so fast paced with AI and people integrating the different kinds of mediums together to create what we see. AR and VR are my favorite things in digital fashion because it kind of gives you that interactive touch to everything. Yes, a motion graphic is very pretty, but when it comes to life, that's completely different. 

Also, those mirrors that the Zero10 app has - I'm such a big fan. I love them. I wish I could just go and stay there all day and try.

Are there any particular artists, designers, or thought leaders in the fashion tech realm who have influenced or inspired your work? If so, why?

There's this AR artist. I hope I pronounced his name right, but it's Doddz (@doddz). The filters that he makes…oh, my God. Makes you want to leave everything and start doing that. People who have that kind of impact. They need to be protected. I love being inspired by people just because it's not even that it's cool, but the kind of work that goes into it, it's just so amazing. I love his work. 

Then, of course, Stephy (@stephyfung) is amazing. I really like her work, and since she's self taught, I feel like I really relate to her. And she also has a graphic design background, so whenever I'm like, this is too hard. Maybe I should take a break or something. No, there's a lot of people out there who are like me who have the same story and they're still doing it despite it all. She literally shows all her processes in the Twitch streams. It's so refreshing to see all that and to be so open with other young designers who could even possibly be your competition in the future, but you're still so open to them. Makes me really respect those people.

Can you discuss the role of inclusivity and diversity in the fashion technology industry and its importance in shaping a more equitable future?

I feel like it's already pretty much going well compared to how the physical world we used to be, having a lot of discrimination. We're more open to people, all sorts of people working together. Since collaborations are a very big thing and almost every artist has done at least one or two collaborations, we see that the industry is very welcoming and that people are very open to getting to know each other and wanting to work with people from all sorts of backgrounds, experiences. It's really nice to see that.

What are your future aspirations and goals? Is there a particular impact or legacy you hope to leave?

Oh, my God, that is such a deep question and you're going to get such a deep answer on that.

The thing with me is, whenever I work, I believe that the work that I'm doing, for instance, if it's a fashion film or it's an artwork or whatever it is, that work has value. And that work has a certain ego that I have to fulfill. My ego comes later and the work comes first.

The work should have a purpose and the work should live on even if I'm dead. The work should speak for itself, whether I'm present or not present. The work should have a louder voice than me. My face shouldn't be attached to my work.

So, that's how I think of my work. I want it to carry on and I do not want it to be trendy. I do not want any sort of, you could say, pressures attached to it or anything. I want it to just be what it is. I do not want any kind of labels attached to it. Also, I believe that art and design change with time, like feelings, the meaning and how you see it, it keeps changing.

If I look at the work that I did today, I might not like it, but maybe I'd like it after five years, maybe I'd hate it after ten years. So it keeps changing. But what it made you feel at that present moment is what its purpose is. But it has to be so strong that it keeps continuing, it keeps making people feel something when they see it.

That's very important to me. It's like art, and going to see art pieces that are thousands of years old. It still touches people, still moves people. The best part about it, too, is that the way that it impacts people is never the same, because we're all different and we all perceive things differently.