Metaverse fashion week 2022

It’s Metaverse Fashion Week!

So, the first ever digital fashion week starts tomorrow March 24 2022 and runs until March 27th 2022. It is being launched by Decentraland. If you are unfamiliar with decentraland, you’re not alone. We are also learning about it for the first time. It is, in their own words “The virtual destination for digital assets”. They are a “virtual reality platform” with facilities for buying and selling digital assets including LAND which you can purchase with MANA which is the decentraland cryptocurrency token. Users of the decentraland platform can “create, experience, and monetize their content and applications“. Have I lost you yet? Because I’m lost myself, but this is apparently the future. And while some of us don’t really have that much time left here on earth, what we have, barring an earlier demise than life expectancy, is enough that, if this is the future, we might want to try to wrap our head around it.

So what is Metaverse fashion week 2022?

This is what we found on the Decentraland website:

What designers will be represented at metaverse fashion week?

According to the article “What to Know About Decentraland’s Metaverse Fashion Week” found via wwd.com, “More than 60 brands are on deck to participate in Metaverse Fashion Week, including Tommy Hilfiger, Dolce & Gabbana, Elie Saab, Nicholas Kirkwood, Perry Ellis, Imitation of Christ, Estée Lauder, Etro and many more, with several setting up shop in digital stores that visitors can teleport to and browse.”

So will you be teleporting to these digital stores to browse the digital assets that will be showcased during metaverse fashion week?

What are digital garments anyway?

And what use are they to the general public?

Here’s a great way to explain the idea of digital garments. Back in December of 2015 I wrote a post “Sunday in Pink and Black” right here on this website. The post was illustrated using the photo below.

In the post I wrote “This picture is a composite rendering of a constructed model wearing a pink shift dress designed by #victoriabeckham. We put it together in Photoshop and also did the hair and some makeup work on taaz.com.”

Basically, I created a model in Photoshop using body parts from images, then I dressed the model in a digitalimage of a Victoria Beckham pink shift dress. I put a digital image of a black Chloe clutch in her hand and a digital image of a pair of Jimmy Choo Liesl leather ankle boots on her feet. I also accessorized this digitally constructed model with a digital image of a Valentino necklace and a digital image of a Givenchy Love cuff bracelet.

I did the same in “Can you wear a blue coat with a purple dress?” donning a digitally constructed model in a purple Diane von Furstenberg Wrap Dress with a blue McQ Alexander McQueen Belted Coat.

This is also an image of a digitally constructed model wearing a digital image of a Victoria Beckham dress.

I created these digital renderings because I could not afford to buy these items to try myself. And I suspect this might be the general idea behind selling digital fashion. You might not be able to wear what you purchase in reality, but you can sort of make it look like you did wear it. It will be obvious that it’s been digitally applied to your photo, but eventually people will get used to the idea, presumably, and no one will care that your outfit was digitally applied.

So a digital garment, based on my interpretation of what I’ve read, is an item of clothing that only exists in the virtual realm. You’re not going to purchase it and receive something in the mail. It’s just going to be a virtual image of the clothing item.

What would you even do with digital clothes?

It’s not entirely clear what the intention is behind the whole Metaverse Fashion Week project. It is to showcase the digital fashion that the designers involved have created. But will you be able to purchase these things, and why would you even want to? What would you even do with digital clothing? Are they for you to wear virtually in the way that the models I created are wearing  digital image renderings of designer clothing? Are they for avatars? In which case, this would not be a general public event as most of the general public isn’t participating in this metaverse idea yet where they’re building worlds and have avatars for whom they would need to purchase digital fashion.

It does seem as if digital fashion is intended for the masses. I’ve seen images of people wearing digital clothes, so I am assuming the intention is for real people to become the wearers of digital fashion. Maybe there will be (or already there exists) applications that enable you to upload your photos and affix your digital clothing to your picture in a near to realistic rendering. The metaverse is not seeming on intending to be a fad that only certain people are into. It does seem as if powerful people with money want to change the world to make reality become virtual. But the average person isn’t going to have any need for virtual clothing I don’t think. Maybe fashion bloggers and other people who take a lot of photographs for social media might get use out of virtual fashion options.

When this acne studios leather jacket was circulating back around 2014 or so, I wanted it so badly. But I couldn’t afford that kind of purchase (still can’t yet). I wanted to see what the jacket would look like on me, so I photoshopped it onto myself.

 

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I did the same with other designer clothing like Herve Leger and Peter Pilotto dresses. They always looked too unrealistic to post; but now it seems like this is on the verge of becoming a thing? Maybe? Or not?

Here’s another creation from the post “Knee high boots with your Herve Leger Tayler bandage dress?” where a digitally constructed model was put in a red Herve Leger bandage dress with black Jimmy Choo knee high boots and a Saint Laurent bag and Balenciaga biker jacket

If the technology allows for you to put designer clothing on pictures of yourself to make it look like you are actually wearing the pieces, would you spend money to purchase high end digital fashion that you can’t actually wear in real life because it’s only a digital file representation of the item?

BTW: If I’ve gotten the whole metaverse fashion week and digital fashion thing all wrong, feel free to correct my mistakes. I’m not here pretending I know what I’m talking about. This is just what I’ve understood from my readings and I’m the first to admit that sometimes I get it completely wrong.