Virtual fashion shows, shop openings, NFT promotions: Fashion and luxury brands are becoming increasingly involved in the metaverse and are already generating millions of dollars there.
Gucci, Balenciaga and Burberry create digital fashion and accessories that are only worn in virtual meta-worlds. But these virtual outfits are not limited to avatars for worlds like Horizon Worlds or Dencentraland. Users can wear these fashions to Zoom meetings, pose with the garments on Instagram or Snapchat, or even open their own fashion shops via Forever 21 on Roblox.
The first Metaverse Fashion Week (#MVFW) took place from 24-27 March 2022 on the 3D platform. Dencentraland took place. With showrooms, after-show parties, shops, panel discussions and fashion shows by top brands: the international fashion programme featured collections by, among others Tommy Hilfiger, Paco Rabanne and Dolce & Gabbana.
Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana have unveiled a bespoke collection of 20 complete looks for Metaverse Wearables, specially designed to celebrate the creativity and innovation of Metaverse Fashion Week.
Following the catwalk show, the entire collection was on display in an exclusive, by UNXD curated Dolce & Gabbana pop-up in Decentraland's Luxury Fashion District.
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Metaverse Fashion Week 2022: Dolce & Gabbana took the term Catwalk literally and sent cats of all kinds down the gimmicky virtual catwalk in the virtual world of Decentraland. Not everyone managed to attend the shows, however: Browser crashes and difficulties for first-time visitors to even find the locations marred the experience for many.
Nike in VR and AR: With Nikeland virtually in Roblox and with Augmented Reality on Fifth Avenue in New York
The Nikeland experience in the Nike NYC House of Innovation Flagship Store briefly transforms the kids' area into a virtual playground. The immersive augmented reality experience allows customers to use Snapchat lenses and customise their own 3D avatars with Nike products, test their skills and compete against other customers.
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Nikeland in Roblox: Almost 7 million people from all over the world visited the virtual Nikeland business in Roblox since it opened five months ago.
The key strategy for Nike's sales in the metaverse are token NFTs. An NFT (Non-Fungible Token) is a type of certificate of authenticity, deed or proof of ownership for a digital asset (e.g. a virtual trainer, artwork or virtual land), secured on the blockchain. Nike is among the first major brands to push the idea that virtual goods have the same value as their real-world counterparts, similar to Burberry and some luxury manufacturers. It also creates some brand extension benefit rather than just a collectible for the sake of collecting, which is necessary to prevent NFTs from simply becoming a fad.
VOGUE Business brings gloss to the metaverse: chic but soulless
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Vogue Business showed herself to be refreshingly experimental and open to new terrain: with her Vogue & Yahoo Metaverse Business Experience the glossy magazine focused on a dazzling, colourful and futuristic chic dream world that perfectly matched the brand and was perfectly photorealistic.
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Pre-produced videos in hologram style (only 2D, but very well "cheated") showed the speakers larger than life, but sometimes unfortunately without sound (solution: reload!) or without the video (reload!). Audio problems, however, plague almost all virtual platforms, we already know that.
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Very nice idea and implementation: In a kind of Open Air Gallery Showed Vogue "Milestones of Fashion in the Metaverse". Shown here: one of the D&G dresses from the nine-piece "Collezioni Genesi", which sold for nearly $ 6 million in September 2021.
Disappointing, however, were the avatars with the help of which the participants had to enter the "Experience": we all looked like the Terminator T-1000 made of liquid chrome. Real networking and nice encounters hardly happened, and despite the marketing buzz, there were no more than about 35 participants.
Fashion brands are expanding into the metaverse for several reasons:
1. they want to attract younger target groups with digital outfits and create new, innovative purchase incentives on top. Because: creating, exchanging, owning and consuming digital goods is an important part of everyday life for Generation Z.
2. they offer their young designers platforms or virtual worlds in which no one is limited by expensive materials or lack of capital. In addition, the metaverse offers opportunities for young designers who need to assert themselves outside the haute couture scene. "This is an opportunity to democratise the industry for designers and creatives," says Daria Shapovalova, founder of the digital marketplace DressX. "It's quite hard to be a young designer, but with digital fashion anyone can try. It's all about you and your laptop."
The fashion industry has found a "new gold mine". No one wants to miss the next gamechanger after e-commerce. The US investment banking and securities trading firm Morgan Stanley predicts that the luxury fashion industry alone could turn over as much as $50 billion in the metaverse over the next ten years. Ralph Lauren, for example, could generate part of its high profits in Q3 2021 due to virtual investments and the young shopper base thus attracted.
4. some brands refer to their contribution to sustainability. The Metaverse offers the opportunity to drastically reduce the high resource consumption of our lifestyle. Further arguments: Mobility would be significantly reduced if users primarily stayed in the metaverse. And: supply chains, logistics and warehousing are easier to organise in virtual worlds or in some cases completely superfluous.
In the next blog post: how 11 top fashion brands are pioneering the metaverse.
11 Top Fashion Brands Engaging in the Metaverse:
- Nike
- Gucci
- Ralph Lauren
- Louis Vuitton
- Balenciaga
- Charli Cohen / Selfridges
- Burberry
- Adidas
- BoohooMAN
- Forever 21
- Dolce & Gabbana
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