Gone are the concerns around supply chains, sustainable practices or even the very laws of physics.
Fashion has gone into the metaverse. Virgil Abloh, founder and CEO of Italian luxury fashion label Off-White is venturing into the fully digital space, building a virtual clothing brand for clothes to wear in the “metaverse”. A buzzword rapidly gaining popularity, the metaverse refers to a variety of virtual experiences, environments and assets which gained momentum during the online-everything shift of the pandemic.
Recently Abloh collaborated with Stevie Williams and DGK for a limited edition skate deck NFT. Sold out almost instantly! With the demand for NFTs growing, it's nor surprise many luxury designers are starting to join the revolution and start launching digital versions of their clothing, tailored for the Metaverse.
“I want to make virtual clothes to paint pictures physical clothes cannot, and let buyers access a new dimension of their personal style – no matter who they are, where they live, and the virtual worlds they love”, said Abloh in a statement.
Virgil Abloh has been the American artistic director of Louis Vuitton’s menswear collection since March 2018. LVMH clearly sensed the opportunity and has taken a majority stake in the Off-White label.
This isn’t the first time has ventured into virtual fashion. Early this year, global fashion powerhouse Gucci made headlines when it sold a virtual in-game version of one of its popular Dionysus bags for more than the physical version usually retails for. And let's not forget Travis Scott entering the metaverse by doing an exclusive on Fortnite which garnered massive attention.
Fashion isn’t the only industry banking on the profitability of the metaverse. In a more understandable shift, Big Tech is pushing its chips onto the table with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg telling employees the future of the company would go far beyond its current project of building a set of connected social apps and some hardware to support them.
In a remote address to employees about the future of the company, Zuckerberg laid out his vision to go far beyond the tech giant’s current project of building a set of connected social apps and some hardware to support them. Instead, he said, Facebook would strive to build something bigger.
“What I think is most interesting is how these themes will come together into a bigger idea,” Zuckerberg said. “Our overarching goal across all of these initiatives is to help bring the metaverse to life.”
Whether it’s the fabric on our skin or the fabric of the Universe, one thing is for sure – virtual has a place in our economies of the future.
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