The luxury industry suddenly looked pretty old in the noughties. Not a good look for an industry that draws a not inconsiderable part of its raison d’être from the future – namely from the claim to know pretty much exactly what people will want to wear tomorrow. Back then, designers and CEOs alike were impressively wrong in their predictions of how and where they would buy what they wanted. In the beginning, “e-commerce” was so frowned upon in the fashion world that it always sounded like “eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee? Order luxury fashion online without trying it on? Have it delivered to your home in the usual way? Unthinkable, you’re all on the wrong track.
As you know, things turned out differently. At least since the pandemic, even luxury watches have been ordered online as a matter of course. Mytheresa.com, the offshoot of the Munich store Theresa, now has a turnover of more than 600 million euros with luxury brands. The labels themselves got going fairly slowly, in 2014 almost 40 percent of luxury brands were still not selling online. Jokes are still being made about the digital late bloomers to this day.
Just hot air or the next big thing? Burberry Virtual Bag on Roblox.
(Photo: manufacturer)
Just don’t let that happen again. That’s why luxury brands, by their standards, were early when the Metaverse was proclaimed the dimension of the future. No one could really define the buzzword at first, but no matter where or what exactly this thing was, this time you would be there for all digital adventures. As early as 2019, Louis Vuitton, after all one of the most expensive brands in the world, launched the first “skins” for the game League of Legends. Such digital outfits, which can be purchased within the game, soon followed Fortnitewhere brands such as Balenciaga and Moncler are now also represented.
Gucci now offers virtual perfume itself
In 2021, Gucci opened its own “Gucci Town” on the online gaming platform Roblox, where users can play, chat, meet virtual friends and create their own worlds. The new Gucci perfume Flora just got its own garden, including an avatar of the advertising face Miley Cyrus. In addition to bags and accessories, visitors can now also buy the digital perfume in a backpack with a double G in the online store.
And at the end of March, the world’s first Metaverse Fashion Week was proclaimed, but it didn’t take place in the real world, but on the Decentraland platform. Brands such as Etro, Tommy Hilfiger and Dolce & Gabbana presented digital runway shows with avatars. The spectators themselves could also move there as avatars. The whole setting was reminiscent of Second Life and was so jerky that many users gave up in frustration. On September 11th, Tommy Hilfiger will show his physical show in New York for the first time in parallel as an avatar version on Roblox. And – it’s business, after all – both the real and virtual designs will be available immediately.
“Of course people will pay for virtual fashion”: Marjorie Hernandez, co-founder of marketplace “The Dematerialised”.
(Photo: The Dematerialized)
So big announcements from brands everywhere to conquer the Metaverse. Whereby the dazzling term is often used in a rather vague way. “No word is currently misunderstood as often as Metaverse,” says Marjorie Hernandez, one of the most important voices in Germany when it comes to digital fashion. Born in Venezuela, she co-founded the blockchain provider “Lukso” in 2017, followed two years ago by “The Dematerialised”, a marketplace for digital NFT fashion. “My definition may not be particularly exciting, but basically it’s just the Internet, only in the 3.0 version. The Metaverse isn’t being built, like a lot of people always make it sound like,” says Hernandez. “It already exists and is growing.”
After music and films, fashion should finally be dematerialized
About as vaguely as people imagined the Internet in the 1980s, there are now a wide variety of future visions, some of which will probably remain pipe dreams. “But it’s almost certain that at some point we’ll be fluid from the real to the virtual world and live in a ‘multiverse’.” So in the morning you sit at the breakfast table with the very real family, then you take part in a conference in virtual space as an avatar, in the evening you play an augmented reality game and meet friends there. For the fashion world, this future means one thing above all, believes Hernandez: “The decoupling of value and physical product.” Or in other words: the dematerialization of clothing and accessories.
The famous Etro Paisley in the virtual version at the first Metaverse Fashion Week at the end of March.
(Photo: Etro)
If you’re sitting there in a fairly real pair of pants and top, you might find this idea a bit daring. Music can be digitized, films and series, maybe money – but fashion? How does that work? How are you supposed to wear this? And this is where the misunderstanding lies. Not you, but the digital you will consume fashion in the Metaverse.
Mark Zuckerberg presented this at a presentation last October on the occasion of the renaming of his company to, exactly: Meta. The real Zuck was standing there in front of his avatar, who, like him, was wearing a black sweater and jeans. With a swipe, the digital Zuck had on a T-shirt, then a Halloween costume, a space suit. Scroll through the virtual wardrobe for something suitable, like on Tinder. Nice gimmick. There was still malice on Twitter. Does the future look so lame?
Beyond material boundaries, digital clothing can be incredibly exciting
The community was right. Because when it comes to fashion in the digital space, the possibilities should finally be limitless. Design can free itself from material limitations: clothing that constantly changes color, whose surface shimmers like liquid metal or bursts into flames, takes on forms that would be incompatible with the laws of nature. The Meta people tweeted to Balenciaga that same night if they could support her on Metaverse fashion issues. Apparently there was no answer.
Fashion that really fits like a glove: model Kristen McMenamy with an NFT accessory that sold out instantly on The Dematerialised.
(Photo: The Dematerialized)
But how do you make money with this concept, will customers really pay for “nothing” to wear? “Of course,” says Marjorie Hernandez as a matter of course. “I still remember a young guy in Berlin who said I was crazy. You can’t earn anything with digital fashion because it’s worth nothing.” Hernandez laughs out loud. “He was wearing a Supreme t-shirt himself, which costs $5 to make but sells easily for $150.” For a long time now, fashion has not only been linked to material value, its actual value has long been of an unreal nature. Get paid for status or group membership.
And it has long been earned with immaterial fashion. A virtual Gucci bag was recently resold on Roblox for 350,000 of its own cryptocurrency Robux, the equivalent of around $4115 – while the same model costs “only” $3400 in the real world. The platform “The Dematerialised”, in which Hernandez is involved, launched a “phygital” dress with the label Rotate at Copenhagen Fashion Week in August: For 800 euros you get a real dress with a flame print plus an NFT of the design that is then virtually really on fire to the fact that users can be tailored to the digital body. For 80 euros there is only the digital draft for the Instagram self or the digital ancestral gallery. Direct-to-Avatar is the new Direct-to-Consumer.
Noisy business of fashion the sales potential is estimated at 50 billion dollars by 2030. Generation Z already spends an average of eight hours online every day. In the new luxury study by the Boston Consulting Group, almost half of those surveyed stated that they were interested in virtual online shops. Almost two-thirds of shoppers aged 18-34 find the Metaverse makes it easier to discover luxury brands. Balenciaga has even set up its own “Metaverse Business Unit”. Dematerialization is considered the industry’s next Dorado.
Dolce & Gabbana turned over more than five million dollars with a “phygital collection”.
A rather successful – and lucrative – phygital collection was created by the otherwise moderately innovative label Dolce & Gabbana. Parallel to the Alta Moda presentation last autumn, an auction of nine designs took place in cooperation with the UNXD platform. The “Collezione Genesi” consisted of five classic couture dresses with a corresponding NFT version: fabrics with an even more shimmering surface, a glass suit, unbelievably sparkling jewellery. The other four designs were purely virtual in nature. Total proceeds: 1885 Ether (Ethereum cryptocurrency), at that time the equivalent of almost 5.7 million dollars.
“Phygital”, i.e. the interaction of physical and digital, is definitely a concept with a great future, agrees Marjorie Hernandez. When customers buy a product, they can always get the digital twin so they can use it in the metaverse: when strolling through Roblox, at the next fashion week, or when the avatar takes part in a video call.
According to the entrepreneur, in order to move freely in it, it is important that the Metaverse does not belong to anyone, neither to the Meta group nor to a gaming provider, but in the future to be a free universe. Otherwise you pay for an outfit on Roblox, which you cannot use for a concert on Fortnite. Or you may have to buy a certain beauty filter for your avatar several times. “It would be a bit like,” says Hernandez, “like leaving a lot of money at Dior’s store and then the salespeople say, ‘Oh, sorry, these things can only be worn here in the store, take them outside you’re not allowed to.” Unthinkable. Or?