The "metacosm" of the fashion industry replicates the failures of 20 years ago

On the left is a building lit up by luxury brands, on the right is a huge advertisement for new products by international beauty leaders, and a red carpet with no end in sight, and when you look up, the word "welcome" flashes in the dome of this fashion district – not on the Champs Elysées in Paris, but in a virtual world.

Not long ago, the world's first "Metaverse Fashion Week" (MVFW) was held in the virtual world platform Decentraland, including Forever 21, Tommy Hilfiger and Estée Lauder, more than 60 international brands participated in this event, and netizens from all over the world logged on to the website as cartoon avatars and strolled through this wonderful cyber world.

The traditional offline fashion week, usually only the stars and bloggers who have received invitations from the brand side are eligible to enter the show, and the MVFW is free for all users, sitting in front of the computer, you only need to move your fingers, you can get close to the latest works brought by top designers, and even as long as you bind the wallet, you can buy the latest virtual and physical clothing of big names.

After the show, the audience can also experience the "Meta-Universe Concert" brought by several dancers and DJ singers, which is the ultimate enjoyment of the audiovisual senses.

「Everyone’s a VIP in the metaverse!」 (Everyone in the Metaverse is a VIP!) ), the slogan of the fashion week is very loud.

The display of Forever 21 at Fashion Week |aboutmetaverse

Meta-universe "show"

During this Meta-Universe Fashion Week, users can purchase a Tommy Hilfiger coat for their avatar for just 20 MANA (Decentraland tokens, about $50).

Fast fashion brand Forever 21 has rented the equivalent of 450,000 square feet of space in Decentraland's fashion district, opened a virtual store, and sold exclusive NFTs to provide clothing for users to wear or collect from their characters.

As the only beauty brand in this fashion week, Estée Lauder has ingeniously placed a giant "small brown bottle" in Decentraland and given away 10,000 copies of its best-selling product, the high-end night repair serum-style NFT, which users can see the character's face "light up" after use.

Watchmaker Bulova has partnered with D-Cave to unveil a new version of its iconic Computrom watch, available for visitors to purchase in both a wearable virtual and physical version, priced at $450 in a physical standard version.

Independent designers and fashion brands from China, such as Guo Pei, Kingwen and Yaping Chen, also joined the celebration. Not only fashionable, but also eye-catching, just walking around Decentraland will reveal quaint Chinese court architecture and Tokyo's neon streets full of early-century style.

Decentraland also has gifts for art and film lovers. At the Cash Labs Space Art Gallery and Screening Room, people can see artists' works, as well as movie theaters where they can watch fashion blockbusters from brands such as Chanel and House of Lanvin, and learn about the close connection between fashion and art.

Judging from the popularity of NFTs and physical goods of various brands and the density of people on the spot, it is clear that this unique fashion week in the virtual world has been a great success.

Giovanna Graziosi, head of MVEW, said: "The fashion industry shares intrinsic characteristics with the metaverse, and when they are combined, they can burst into amazing results. Metacosm Fashion Week not only helped brands 'unlock' more new consumers, but also re-evaluated the diversity and reachability of fashion ideas."

Jon Roman, Senior Vice President of Global Consumer Marketing and Online Business at Estée Lauder, admits: "We don't just want to bring people into the virtual world, we really want to operate here and introduce the brand to consumers who are already in the metaverse."

Fashion Circle "Derealization to Virtuality"

With the global pandemic of the new crown epidemic, the fashion industry as an extremely important part of the offline retail industry, whether it is its production, distribution logistics or fashion weeks and shows related to many industries, have suffered a huge blow. In recent years, the "meta-universe" - online virtual reality platform, which has emerged in a timely manner, has attracted the fashion industry facing many problems with its relatively safe token trading system, attaching importance to users' audiovisual senses, not being limited by time and space, and being loved by young people.

Tommy Hilfiger booth

But MVFW isn't the world's first virtual fashion week. Animal Crossing successfully hosted Online Fashion Week in 2020, and other fashion weeks have followed suit. Helsinki Fashion Week 2020 is a fully digital event, with precedents such as Hanifa's digital runway and Balenciaga's "Afterworld".

In an interview with Vogue Business, Justin Banon, CEO and co-founder of MVFW partner Boson Protocol, explained the importance of metacosmities to brands: "Eight months ago, brands would ask , 'What is metaversity?' Now, it has become an important part of the luxury brand strategy. Brands must have a metacosmic strategy."

It's worth noting that many brands didn't just hit the virtual world track this year, and international brands such as Gucci and Balenciaga have been offering pure digital products for quite some time, and have actively dabbled in different "metaverses" and online game platforms to launch NFT merchandise, for example, Gucci has sold virtual versions of Gucci Dionysus packages on Roblox.

Luxury brand Ralph Lauren has also opened virtual pop-ups on metaverse platforms Roblox and Zepeto, while sports companies such as Nike and Vans have also opened permanent spaces in Roblox. Burberry marked its presence in the metaverse by partnering with Mythical Games to launch an NFT in the latter's game, Blankos Block Party.

According to Morgan Stanley analysis, the Web 3.0 revenue channel in the fashion and luxury industry could reach $50 billion by 2030, and analysts at the bank predict that NFTs and social gaming are the main growth areas.

Metaverse, and then what?

Above the hall of the Fashion Week venue, a display similar to a stock exchange hall constantly shows the exchange rate of the organizer Decentraland's token MANA against the US dollar – from the initial $0.024 to the $4.50 at the end of last year, MANA has soared nearly 200 times in the short term. The CURRENT MANA token price is stable at around $2.7.

As the organizer of this Meta-Universe Fashion Week, Decentraland, which opened to the public in February 2020, is a 3D virtual reality platform based on the Ethereum blockchain, managed as a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) and overseen by the non-profit Decentraland Foundation. It was founded by Argentines Ari Meilich and Esteban Ordano and raised $26 million during the 2017 initial coin offering.

Display showing mana exchange rates in real time

The Decentraland ecosystem has two core parts: land parcels, which are irreplaceable assets, and currencies called MANA, which are used to purchase land parcels and make transactions in other platforms. The goal of the virtual world is to create an open economic model with no intermediary fees. Users can sell their purchased land to other users, and the purchased land has a lifetime ownership right, and the process does not have to worry about being deleted.

As for the digital asset NFT (Non-Fungible Token) standing on the outlet of the meta-universe, Decentraland is an excellent trading platform, which sets up an NFT secondary trading market marketplace in the map, and the tradable digital assets are mainly divided into land within the platform, wearable devices, special names and NFTs sold by external trading platforms.

Users embed their own designed NFTs in the scene, taking advantage of the playability of the scene to attract other players, thereby improving the probability of trading. Using blockchain technology to acquire and transfer virtual property rights, and allowing users to hold these property rights in perpetuity, operate, and generate profits for their own content, this is the biggest feature of Decentraland.

In fact, if you look back at history, Decentraland is not the first meta-universe "landlord", and the marketers of big brands have invested heavily in the virtual world to promote as early as 20 years ago.

In 2003, in Silicon Valley ". As the "com bubble" burst, Linden Lab launched the classic online game Second Life. The earliest "metaverse" game was so successful that it gained millions of users within a few years.

At the same time, with the popularity of the game, many brands have looked at this emerging virtual world and begun to invest real money and silver in it for marketing. "Big Blue" IBM purchased several "islands" in Second Life specifically for employee recruitment and staff training; Coca-Cola "built" a "Thirsty Pavilion" in the game; Adidas and Sears opened stores in the game; and CNET and Reuters opened virtual branches in the game.

20 years ago, "Second Life" was also once a marketing darling| picture network

Ideals are full, reality is bone, and although brands think they are catching up with the "trend", the truth is that players in Second Life rarely "visit" the space in the game. According to the data, the popularity data of the novice village that can receive the "Second Life" virtual currency in the game is 136,000, and Coca-Cola's "Desire Pavilion" index is only 26.

After the rise of the VR boom a decade later, brands that have forgotten their scars have once again seized every opportunity to turn content that could have been made with 2D video into a 360-degree video and VR experience, allowing consumers to "more immerse" in the charm of products and brands. In fact, seven years ago, the VR company, the main owner of the brand and marketing, can be said to be pure advertising-driven, and when VR did not become as popular as expected, the brand's marketing department quickly withdrew, just like when they left "Second Life".

In a sense, from "Second Life" to virtual reality, to now Web3, major brands are not interested in technology or products, but to use the "pioneering" nature of these worlds to show that they can keep up with the trend - the important thing is not whether they can use new technologies to create products, but whether the brand looks "technology".

It's conceivable that even if this wave of "metaverses" and Web3 didn't replicate the success of the Internet (or even the success of the Internet), big brands would still be tirelessly looking for the next trendy technology - Fake it, until you make it (pretend, then deliver) Silicon Valley proverbs also apply to mad people on Madison Avenue.