Dolce & Gabbana, Selfridges and Tommy Hilfiger featured fashion in the celebration on Decentraland.
Given the hype over the virtual concerts by Travis Scott and Ariana Grande held in the video game Fortnite, brands are starting to see the scope and potential of the metaverse. This past week was the turn of Decentraland’s Metaverse Fashion Week. For many brands, this was their first toe in the water and it heralds the start of an exciting journey. Not everything was perfect by any means, but there were some cool sights on display. Let’s get digital One highlight was the Dolce & Gabbana x UNXD Catwalk Show, which had a real buzz (unlike some of the other shows, to be honest) and had clearly seized the opportunity: the metaverse isn’t about recreating real life but about pushing boundaries and being creative. It’s something fashion brands are used to doing and they did it well here, with digital models as cat avatars flying around rather than stuck on the catwalk – as well as an exclusive look at 20 digital wearables.
Meanwhile, Selfridges, well known for its retail theatre, created an interactive experience featuring the Paco Rabanne + Victor Vasarely collection as NFTs. Rather than delivering a shoppable experience, the retailer offered a digital recreation of its Birmingham store that served as a gallery and introduction to NFTs. Tommy Hilfiger, on the other hand, went for a “phygital” approach. The brand showcased its Spring 2022 collection virtually, followed by opening up its digital store so that shoppers could buy NFTs connected to the label. They could then redeem these NFTs for their physical counterparts. Meanwhile, the Charli Cohen x RSTLSS Experience was from another world, quite literally, as meteorites constantly fell around the audience and spawned the latest limited-edition RSTLSS wearables. Again, it was an amazing show that got a lot of people talking. What this means for brands We’d have to question whether those visiting Decentraland for the first time were getting the best experience, as people unfamiliar with the platform and the metaverse were left disoriented at best. There were also questions about whether a particular show had started (in some cases it had already finished!), with some avatars wandering around aimlessly, walking into walls and just jumping up and down. Others were getting so lost that they missed everything. The graphics may be a bit slow and jerky, but the fact you can access such platforms through your desktop is a great leveller. The space is still being constructed, after all. Like the first versions of web pages, people will build on top, improving it and creating something that gets better and better over time. The question for those brands who participated will be what value they derived from the event. Is it a case of opening to new customers and if so, how will they measure success? Attendees, post-event sales, social media discussions? Also, are these virtual exhibits and locations going to stay there post event, and how will brands ensure people keep coming back rather than just leaving them as digital follies? Any label that is building an audience in the metaverse should think about how it continues to engage that audience, especially if it’s still paying rent for its virtual locations, although that’s something we’ve been unable to ascertain. But it’s clear that there is real scope for excitement. Although so-called “Web3” fashion and retail are still in their infancy, we have seen how fast digital trends can develop and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see some elements of this week’s new virtual world appearing in real-life fashion shows and retail environments.
Decentraland’s Metaverse Fashion Week received far more industry attention than any digital fashion event before it.
Its arrival was timely — peak hype even, as the metaverse and NFTs move into popular lexicon. Virtual real estate platform Decentraland jumped at the opportunity to recruit fashion brands and fans to its blockchain-based platform for the four-day event. The verdict so far? Mixed and possibly premature, but in terms of excitement and eyeballs, a success, according to brands and metaverse consultants.
“It is just the beginning. We need to take one step at a time,” says Giovanna Graziosi Casimiro, the head of Metaverse Fashion Week (MVFW). As browsers and computers become more powerful, she adds, the quality will improve and more closely resemble the results that the fashion community often expects. Overall, Casimiro says, feedback from participating brands is that they are happy with the result; organisers are already planning to take what they learned from the first iteration and apply it to the next event, which is slated to take place a year from now.
The series of fashion-focused events, which ended Sunday, attracted a wide variety of brands and creatives, including Etro, Dundas, Dolce & Gabbana and Estée Lauder. Still, some notable players in the metaverse, including Gucci and Ralph Lauren, did not participate. The entire experience was blockchain-based, created on land sold as NFTs and digital fashion bought and worn as NFTs.
For some, especially those who have been developing digital fashion for years, it was too soon to broadcast a blockchain-based fashion event and too late to position this as the best that digital fashion technology can do, based on other examples of high-profile projects. On LinkedIn, the digital fashion community traded notes: “The user experience might need to improve just a tad to facilitate mass adoption,” wrote Anne-Christine Polet, who led PVH’s 3D initiatives before starting Hatch and Stitch. “The future looks like the past,” commented Kerry Murphy, co-founder of digital fashion house The Fabricant, which created the first NFT dress ever sold. But, he added, while the user experience is “from the ’90s”, development is speeding up and will be better next year.
According to feedback from other attendees, the graphics were rudimentary compared to previous digital fashion events, such as the Fabric of Reality show in 2020 or Gucci’s Roblox garden in 2021, and the experience was often compromised by glitches, including massive delays or events turning into black screens of code, that made it challenging at times to experience planned events. It was also hard to visualise turnout, as when Decentraland gets crowded, it automatically places visitors in multiple different realms.
As one fashion-tech expert noted, the risk of hyping a metaverse fashion event is that because the 3D design capabilities of Decentraland are currently restrictive, the end result can be underwhelming, and thus those who aren’t evangelists of digital fashion might find it off-putting and could be turned off from other events in the future. Because digital fashion events are still so nascent and vulnerable to criticism, and because the crypto community is so powerful, multiple experts that Vogue Business spoke to declined to go on-record with criticism for fear that it would jeopardise future projects.
“Someone always has to be first, and by going first you don’t always get it right,” says Max Vedel, co-founder and creative director at Swipe Back, a metaverse creative agency that has worked with Gucci, Nike and Swarovski. “That shouldn’t be seen as a negative. [MVFW] is the first foray for a lot of big names into the metaverse and while they didn’t always get it right, there were some pretty amazing shows on display.”