The First Metaverse Fashion Week: “Yay” or “Nay”

The NFT has been the hottest topic recently, and we are wondering whether the fashion NFTs represent the next evolutionary step with digital fashion skins for avatars and wardrobe collectibles that can be used in gaming and multiple metaverses. However, the first-ever digital fashion week showed that technological improvements were still required to gain momentum.

The metaverse fashion week took place March 23–27 in Decentraland, a decentralized virtual social platform on the Ethereum blockchain. Decentraland shared that the platform saw 108,000 unique attendants throughout 5 days. On the first day, Selfridges launched a store where they presented NFT of the real exposition currently held in London called UNIVERSE.

Decentraland’s graphics immediately raised questions from Instagram users: because of the lack in quality, the shows looked ridiculous, forcing brands to only post the images of the skins that could be purchased in-game. For example, Dolce & Gabbana used cats with glasses and hairstyles as their digital models.

Source: Dolce & Gabbana

Philipp Plein incorporated a huge skull into his runaway show: its tongue uncoiled to present the models walking in the show. On the brand’s website, prices for skins that were sold just off the runway started at $1,500 for Moon $urfer and went up to $15,000 for Platinum $urfer.

Source: Philipp Plein

Additionally, brands opened digital boutiques in the Metaverse. In the Luxury District, shoppers could find Dolce & Gabbana and Philip Plein, but also luxury watch boutique Jacob & Co and a shop with Hèrmes Birkin bags. Jacob & Co launched “Astronomia Metaverso,” an NFT collection with eight watches, each for one planet in the Solar System.

Source: Jacob & Co

On the third day, there was an Etro show and a presentation of the Dress X collection. The Etro show was the biggest collapse of the MVFW, as the styling of weird-looking avatars in mediocre garments was considered enough for a collection in the Metaverse. The fans didn’t like the show and tore the collection’s presentation down.

Source: Etro

On the final day, Estée Lauder presented a product that gave the avatars a veil of gold glitter. They distributed the product for free, so users were happy and their avatars sparkled. The final chord was the Auroboros x Grimes Immersive Experience party. Everyone noticed that she moved better than other avatars and models on the catwalk.

Source: Auroboros

MVFW is a great step in the development of digital fashion and it’s cool to see so many brands taking part in the new page of the fashion industry history. However, the shows didn’t look the way brands expected they would: avatars were pixelated and couldn’t really move smoothly. There is hope that the next fashion week would be more technologically advanced, but Decentraland hasn’t announced a date yet.