INTO THE META VERSE

From niche to top destination, the metaverse is pushing the limits of fashion in the virtual world

- MARIAN SAN PEDRO

Balenciaga partnered with video game company Epic Games to create a video game for its Fall 2021 show. Louis Vuitton, Burberry and Dolce and Gabbana started venturing into NFTs (non-fungible tokens). Gucci and Ralph Lauren have opened virtual pop-ups in metaverse platforms. Decentraland held the first-ever Metaverse Fashion Week. If these huge brands dared to dip their toes in the new space for fashion, will the rest of the world follow suit?

What really is the metaverse? Simply put, it’s the future of the Internet. It exists as a fully virtual, synthetic environment where people, locations, assets, and spaces are interconnected. We’ve already seen the industry blend technology with fashion, such as wearable devices or smart fabrics, but the metaverse of fashion has also always been present and constantly refined, more popularly as video game skins (costumes for characters). This is the general idea of it: the fashion-savvy virtual community is being engaged in this world at a low price, and even NFT holders who are willing to spend currency in that world are involved.

At the onset of the pandemic and lockdowns, it was only reasonable to produce less physical objects and view virtual spaces as investments— the notion of value over product.

The Metaverse At Work