From 24-27th of March, WeAr visited the Metaverse Fashion Week which offered both catwalk and shopping experiences displaying known brands as well as emerging talent.
This has been set up to ease people into familiar environments and aimed to replicate its counterparts in New York or Paris. Clearly as a response to the growing trend of virtual clothing which has been happening since the past two years and accelerated by the pandemic.
Brands like Perry Ellis, Dolce & Gabbana and Philip Plein presented collections on virtual runways, usually metaverse wearables (items that can be purchased and worn virtually in the Metaverse). Panel talks were hosted with the likes of Tommy Hilfiger, about Dressing Avatars, the Future of Commerce and Sustainability. And, naturally, there were “after parties”.
The whole programme could be viewed easily on a website and one could ‘jump in’ to participate in one of the programmes. This could either be done with an existing crypto wallet account or alternatively simply as a guest. Once a guest avatar was created one entered into the Metaverse Fashion Week which has a game like character including a map of the different locations where events where happening. Using keyboard and mouse the avatar could walk around, change perspectives, much like in familiar video games.
Dolce & Gabbana’s full look presentation on cat-faced avatars (a play on the word catwalk) were viable in an exclusive Dolce & Gabbana pop-up in Decentraland’s (the is one of the Metaverse worlds) Luxury Fashion District curated by marketplace UNXD.
Etro previewed a real-world collection at the show called Liquid Paisley including men’s and women’s styles alongside accessories.
Hogan and Giuseppe Zanotti meanwhile debuted NFT collections. Hogan set up a pop-up store in Decentraland, selling its physical products as redeemable NFTs n collaboration with Exclusible, a platform for luxury NFTs and metaverse activations. Giuseppe Zanotti worked with blue-chip NFT community DeadFellaz and the neon NFT marketplace to release a series of sneaker NFTs. The collaboration offers the digital-only ‘Cobras’ sneakers which was first available physically in 2021.
The event was open to the general public, not just fashion professionals or insiders. Being there as actual avatars also displayed how many people are around you. Many of those seemed to be regulars in the Metaverse which were there to explore ’the game’ as opposed to judge the fashion. Shopping (for NFTs etc) was the main part – maybe to get access to a garment which later on increases in value.
How successful this was, is hard to say. The general public yet has to be able to enter it.
Decentraland does offer access via desktop only (provided the computer has enough processing power) as opposed to needing a VR headset. However, after the pandemic, when IRL Events are increasing again the question begs: do people, who are not usually active in the virtual environment or are yet to be acquainted with it, trade in a sunny warm day in March to sitting in front of a laptop and viewing what can be googled thereafter?
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