The Lowdown on the Metaverse Fashion Week
The Metaverse Fashion week is a digital fashion week where high-end designers and brands will showcase new collections or digitized versions of existing pieces. The event is being held in Decentraland, a virtual world built on the Ethereum blockchain. Users can access different spaces to create content, explore worlds, and trade in cryptocurrency.
The Metaverse Fashion Week is organized by Dapper Labs, the company behind the popular CryptoKitties game and the upcoming NBA Top Shot collectibles. Dapper Labs has partnered with several major fashion brands for the Fashion Week
Major brands and luxury designers are geared to take their collections into the world of virtual reality.
The digital fashion event, which began on 24 March, saw various designers such as Paco Rabanne, Elie Saab, and more staging virtual fashion collections on Decentraland.
The Metaverse Fashion Week is just one example of how the fashion industry is slowly but surely making its way into the world of virtual reality. Gucci was the first major label to present a digital fashion show in Second Life back in 2007.
MVFW comes after other majo runways, presentations and installations were held during Fashion Month across the globe in New York, London, Milan and Paris.
“This is a first step into what the future of fashion weeks and fashion shows will look like,” said Evelyn Ward, one of the organizers of Metaverse Fashion Week.
While some have embraced digital fashion shows, others in the industry have been more skeptical, with some designers choosing to present physical collections instead.
Aside from runway shows and concerts, MVFW also featured the Boson Portal – Fashion District. A luxury shopping area where fashion brands could sell their digital and physical designs through non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
METAVERSE FASHION WEEK is the world’s first digital fashion week, and it was held in Decentraland from April 12th to April 18th. The event featured over 30 brands and designers. Some of the notable brands that participated in this year’s Metaverse Fashion Week include Louis Vuitton, Balmain, Gucci, Prada, and Dolce & Gabbana.
Giovanni Graziosi Casimiro, head of MVFW, stated to the press that, ” Our aim with MVFW is to show brands what can be done in the world of virtual fashion. We want Decentraland to be a destination for shopping, where users can buy virtual clothing from some of the biggest names in the industry.”
Decentraland announced back in February that MVFW would feature an “all-star roster of digital catwalks”. The event kicked off with Selfridges launching its metaverse store, with Paco Rabanne and Victor Vasarely providing an “immersive experience” during the opening ceremony.
The Metaverse Fashion Week was free and open to anyone with an account on Decentraland, which is also free to open. It consisted of a week-long series of fashion shows, talks, and workshops.
The main event was the Metaverse Fashion Show itself, which ran for two hours on Saturday the 20th of April. The show featured 18 different designers, with each designer showcasing three looks.