New York fashion week designers are embracing the metaverse

New York fashion week designers made sporadic attempts at embracing the metaverse, perhaps underlining that much remains intangible when it comes to digital fashion and our avatars.

Imitation of Christ hosted a catwalk show in Decentraland, a virtual destination and marketplace for digital assets. Jonathan Simkhai partnered with metaverse developer Everyrealm and metaverse production house Blueberry Entertainment to produce a Metaverse Fashion Week event inside Second Life, an online multimedia platform that allows users to create an avatar for themselves and have a second life in a virtual world.

The future of fashion?

"We firmly believe that digital fashion is the future of fashion. It allows people to express themselves freely in the metaverse,” said Mishi McDuff, CEO and Founder of virtual fashion brand Blueberry Entertainment. “We know digital fashion is more sustainable, more accessible, and allows for limitless creativity without the constraints of the physical world. Having the honor to work with Jonathan Simkhai to bring his collection to the metaverse represents a huge step forward for the virtual fashion industry.”

In New York, digital fashion week explores the shifting realities of fashion but users are yet to embrace it in the same way as physical shows. The curated fashion tech expo aims to celebrate the voice of design leaders through a new lens through which the future of fashion may be seen and experienced. While it is difficult to see the details of garments in a digital show, some of the events hosted include animations and showcases from the latest works of digital fashion designers, which are unique to the metaverse.

According to Vox, digital fashion is not limited to clothing for avatars. “It’s a growing fashion subculture that includes the digital design and modeling of real-world clothing, the uploading of designs for real and digital clothing onto the blockchain (so these files can be sold as NFTs), and even digital clothes rendered onto real people.”

While designers are still figuring out the best way to economise virtual platforms with digital collections, investors are looking at opportunities to grow companies on the cusp of a virtual revolution. Net-a-Porter founder Natalie Massenet’s investment vehicle, Imaginary Ventures, on Monday confirmed a stake in digital ID platform Eon, a company that provides a digital ID to turn products into assets that connect to customers, applications and new business models.