Crypto may be struggling to emerge from winter, but at Decentraland’s second annual Fashion Week avatars are downloading digital swag and emoting the night away like it’s 2021.
By Maria Gracia Santillana Linares Nina Bambysheva, Forbes Staff
SStand next to the X-shaped runway in Decentraland’s second annual four-day Fashion Week, an attendee whose head is a large taco is partially obstructing the view of Norwegian designer Peter Dundas’ latest Beyonce-ready creation, as a virtual fashion model reminiscent of Grace Jones struts across the runway, occasionally leaping into flight to strike a pose.
You can simply walk! By Mr. Taco, and past another avatar wearing pink neon “zzzz” glasses brandishing a giant marijuana leaf behind him and another in a traditional Korean Hanbok, to get an unobstructed stage front view. The biggest problem of attending an Ethereum-based runway show is not being distracted by other attendees’ creative, sometimes strange outfits.
Fashion Week in Decentraland’s metaverse is a colorful hodgepodge of corporate branding, NFT collecting and virtual networking set in a sometimes glitchy video game environment. Getting around is as easy as teleporting between pavilions and after a runway show for a digital collective like the Haus of Fuego, or perhaps a sweat-free yoga session hosted by Alo, your avatar can “emote” the night away at virtual raves operating across different time zones, from Berlin to LA.
The 2023 event, which was held in late March, featured 63 different fashion houses, both established and “neo” including Adidas, Coach, DKNY, House of Barth, Tommy Hilfiger, Julia Blanc, Xiaoling Ji, and Dolce & Gabbana. Branding is the name of the game and digital wearables will be hawked in the surrounding environment. Dundas, for example, is selling 10 “looks” from its Paris fashion week, like a limited edition NFT of its double breasted navy blue “Jones Coat” which can be sent to your metamask wallet for 0.033 ETH, or about $60.
The estimated value of digital-fashion in 2021 was $498 Million. Retailers and fashion houses will also be flooded with users from metaverses. According to Allied Market Research, the market is expected to reach $4.8 billion by 2031.
“We’ve seen a lot of designers sort of dabble in this space and really started to experiment,” says Daniel Drak, assistant professor of strategic design and fashion communication at the Parsons School of Design. “But is that a really big opportunity for those brands to really make a ton of profit? I’d say no.”
Adidas made 5,000 of its red Wallrunner jacket available for free at its Metaverse Fashion Week exhibit each day—the oversized logos jumping out the fabric cover the avatar’s face. These jackets were previously available digitally for more than $100.
adidas
Decentraland, an immersive culture platform UNXD and the organizers of the event, claim that the event is more than an online shopping spree for fashion companies and crypto-geeks looking to buy new 3D sunglasses and sneakers, but also a chance to reflect on the future digital wearables.
“In the same way that fashion might work in the real world, where if we put on amazing garments, a dress or a shirt we feel empowered,” Drak explains. “A lot of that also happens online.”
The stakes can be reduced to make luxury shopping less daunting. Can’t afford Gucci? “Log into a metaverse platform and interact with the brand in some other way,” he says.
Decentraland uses Ethereum for the tracking of ownership and transactions, however the mere existence in the virtual world is not recorded on the blockchain. The event took place in two of Decentraland’s 39 districts as users navigated or teleported around the event by clicking on the Fashion Week map.
“This year we decided to have a theme [called Future Heritage] to drive the discussion to a place of not just games and fun but to a place provoking thoughts,” says Giovanna Graziosi Casimiro, head of Metaverse Fashion Week (MVFW) at Decentraland. “The legacy of fashion is key for us to view its future so we are providing a space for different generations to discuss what is coming next.”
It is important to discuss connections between multiple metaverse platforms. Decentraland partnered with 3-D metaverse Spatial and augmented reality metaverse Over to enable users at this year’s show to view and transfer digital wearables across platforms.
But for Fashion Week companies, ultimately it’s about financial opportunities. “Whatever you do in virtual spaces has to be somehow connected or have a return on investment for brands in the physical world,” Casimiro says.
FOr the 63 companies who applied and were granted the right to display their digital wearables in Decentraland’s Fashion Week 2023, attendance has been disappointing—approximately less than 50,000 users visited the event compared to roughly 70 brands and 108,000 visitors a year ago. Crypto’s winter has meant hard times in the nascent metaverse. According to reports, Meta is reducing its Horizon Worlds section after the Reality Lab suffered a loss of $13.7billion in 2022. Disney also fired its entire metaverse workforce in this latest round. DappRadar reports that virtual worlds saw a dramatic decline in their digital land trading volumes over the last year. This is compared to $688 million in Q1 2022 and $311 million for the first quarter.
NFT volumes for fashion collections fell 88% to $15 million in Q1 20,23. That’s a drop of 88% from last year’s comparable quarter, where Nike and Adidas accounted for 85% of the sales. Tech-savvy Gen Zers, who are sensitive to cryptocurrency developments, might have become frightened by recent high-profile bankruptcy filings and the broad regulatory crackdown against digital assets in America. Leading metaverse tokens like Decentraland’s mana and the Sandbox’s sand are down more than 70% over the past year.
Alo led morning meditations and yoga classes on the main runway. They also taught breathwork and did some downward dog exercises without having to work out. However, Fashion Week attendance has dropped sharply since 2022.
The Decentraland Foundation
If the macro environment weren’t challenging enough, there are also nagging technical problems. An afternoon at Decentraland’s Fashion Week is a far cry from a trip to Milan’s Villa Carlotta during Italy’s real fashion week. The biggest problem is slow processing. If you look closely, blurry and pixelated brands are visible on the exhibit floor. If you move too fast, the server may overtax and skip frames. You might also experience randomly appearing buildings and feeling sick. If you scroll too quickly, your browser will freeze due to exhibit overload. You’ll need to restart the browser from the welcome page.
Casimiro said that Decentraland had tried to solve technical issues. He noted new features like credit-card payments, garment creation tools and the ability for brands to rent land virtual for specific times rather than purchase it.
Despite the challenges facing brands in metaverse environments like Decentraland’s Fashion Week, retailers and fashion are committed to investing in this new marketing frontier.
Adidas boasts a portfolio of 33,000 digital wearables that are built on Ethereum. The collection has seen a $138.6M trading volume in both primary and secondary sales, since it was launched in December 2021. At Decentraland’s Fashion Week the sportswear giant created a 16-piece collection of virtual hoodies with prices ranging from $35 to over $8,000 for a pink hoodie launched in collaboration with Bored Ape Yacht Club, which features several columns of green eyes lining the pink-haired hoodie, mimicking the Adidas stripes.
“There are people who are collectors of culture, and they recognize that this is a really lightning rod moment in time, it’s a paradigm shift. That’s how I really think about who our holders are and who we designed it for,” says Erika Wykes-Sneyd, VP of Adidas Three Stripes Studio.
Italian luxury fashion house Dolce & Gabbana hosted its “Future Rewind” contest during the week, displaying winning designs for virtual pieces available exclusively to holders of DGFamily NFTs, a series of loyalty pieces. American icon Tommy Hilfiger held an artificial intelligence contest, in which winners of the preppy look competition were created by Alexandra Serban and Irina Ricu. These looks were then produced by Dress X, a digital fashion collection.
Decentraland’s citizens wore the best of digital fashions to show their support.
Decentraland
Peter Dundas’ designs have graced some of the most well-known stages in pop culture – the Grammys stage, two Super Bowls and countless red carpets. This brand, which is relatively new, has a reputation for glittery embellishments, metallic materials, and deep cutouts on flowing gowns.
“Because we’re not part of these huge brands,” says Evangelo Bousis, cofounder and image director for Dundas, “we allow ourselves the space and the time to actually do things that we really like.”
Dundas, in partnership with Dress X brought special-occasion wear to the metaverse. Nine of his 45 digital wearables had been sold by Dundas at an estimated $666.
But it’s not just digital wearables on sale, some like yoga clothier, Alo, which joined the Metaverse Fashion Week roster this year as the official wellness partner, encouraged visitors to buy its real life bucket hats and sweat suits, available on their website for prices ranging from $58 to $138. According to Angelic Vendette, global head for marketing, 72 million users had attended yoga meditations and breathe work at the event’s start, she says.
“Folks are certainly leaning into their digital identity by showing up and showing that they have wellness and mindful movement at heart by wearing Alo,” in both the metaverse and real life. Alo was able to sell out all of its unisex sweatsuit pieces and bucket hats in retail stores, and attributes its meteoric rise in sales to its metaverse advertising.
“There has been a correlation, which has been really interesting to see,” says Vendette.
Dundas on the other side has made only a few sales in real life due to metaverse initiatives. Exploration of the field is still largely a marketing expense, says image director Bousis, as the brand has a “very small” budget for the collection amid a revenue-sharing contract with partners.
The brand’s 2022 Metaverse Fashion Week appearance saw only three or four actual world sales. They sold items at prices between $800 to $900 per item.
It’s a long game. “We believe that in five to 10 years, people will all have digital closets,” says Bousis.
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