The theme forum "Fashion Metacosmity – A New Era of Sustainable Development" held on April 23 will combine the two latest and hottest concepts of the 21st century, "Metacosmity" and "Sustainability", with a special forum, from the fashion imagination of the post-human era, to the fashion polishing between contemporary art and commerce, and the all-round empowerment system of technology-driven change, connecting the future picture of the virtual world with the industrial problems of the real world. It brought the audience a feast of ideas that not only looked up at the sea of stars but also stepped on reality.
At the beginning of 2020, frequent natural disasters and outbreaks of COVID-19 around the world violently sounded the alarm bells related to sustainable development in the human heart. Since then, we have seen more and more industries, companies, and individuals, from thinking to acting, began to consciously turn to sustainability. Especially in the fashion industry. This industry, which has been criticized as the second largest environmental pollution/carbon emitter, has practiced sustainable development transformation at an unprecedented pace in the past few years, making sustainable development a definite direction for the entire fashion industry to move towards the future.
Especially in China. In the past three years, we have documented the progress of China's fashion industry in great strides towards sustainable development with the "Global Sustainable Fashion Co-Prosperity Action" and hundreds of feature articles. These actions are not only our rich assets, but also the glory of China's fashion industry.
Since 2021, with the rise of the NFT fashion collection, "virtual fashion" has begun to become a hot topic in the global industry, and the gradual popularization of the concept of meta-universe has brought new creativity and innovative possibilities to the fashion industry. According to incomplete statistics, the "meta-universe fashion" news and projects reported by the 8 major media IPs of Huayi Tomorrow All Media Group alone have reached hundreds, and the brands involved in them cover various specific categories such as clothing, beauty, shoes, and hard luxury.
According to Morgan Stanley's report, metaverse topics could add $20 billion to the fashion industry's market potential, with collectibles-form NFT luxury goods likely to become $25 billion business, and metaverse games and NFTs potentially carving up 10 percent of the luxury market share by 2030 — a €50 billion growth opportunity. The report acknowledges that the virtual world will take many years to develop and is why advance layout is strategic for the long-term development of the luxury industry.
If true as the research institute optimistically predicts, the virtual world will undoubtedly be the most promising fashion market in the next 20 years and beyond.
So, the combination of "sustainable development" and "meta-universe", both of which are the most meaningful trends in the future, what kind of new industrial model will be spawned? How should the fashion industry seize the opportunity to lay out as soon as possible? What are the shortcuts or obstacles in the process of making great strides into the future?
Adhering to the principle of "not only anchoring the beautiful vision of achieving the comprehensive sustainable development of the fashion industry, but also exchanging experiences to solve current practical problems", we dedicated the theme of the second forum to "Fashion Metacosmity - A New Era of Sustainable Development".
Professor Zhu Jiaming from the Hengqin Digital Chain Digital Finance Research Institute believes that the contemporary fashion industry is facing a major crisis and needs to undergo a full range of deep transformation, at this time, the metacosm is an important promoter to help the fashion industry complete the transformation and promote reconstruction.
He believes that the model guided by consumerism transforms man and man, man and nature into a consumption relationship, and its essence is to create and satisfy various material desires, push them to the limit, and realize the expansion of desires. Although this model can constantly give different meanings, it is essentially an economic model that opposes sustainable development. In the more than 200 years of consumerism, the fashion industry is one of the most extreme representatives.
However, when human society enters the 21st century, the earth's resources, climate environment and people's consciousness have all prompted the fashion industry to undergo subversive upgrades. The advent of the metaverse, the digital economy, and the development of virtual technology will surely create an era of digital consumption. The fashion industry is bound to move towards a dematerialized digital transformation in this era.
At the same time, the development of the meta-universe will also change the situation in which the public in the traditional consumption field is "controlled" by designers, large companies, and IP, so that communities, individuals, and people can participate in the creation of the future fashion industry.
As the Chairman of the Academic and Technical Committee of Hengqin Digital Finance Research Institute, Professor Zhu Jiaming gave academic guidance to the forum. In the future, WWD China will also work with Professor Zhu Jiaming and his research team to explore all aspects of the fashion industry empowered by digital technology, and contribute to the fashion industry to better enter the metacosm.
From an entrepreneur to an artist, Ms. Cheng Zhuo is familiar with the cultural, artistic, collecting, investment and corporate circles. Since the creation of three-dimensional animation, she has persistently and uninterruptedly carried out artistic exploration, and in recent years, she has created a number of art series such as "Ant God" with "language coding and conceptual genealogy", bringing visual surprises and philosophical and humanistic thinking to the cultural and artistic circles. As early as last June, she took the lead in releasing the NFT work "One" that explored the symbiotic relationship between humans, AI and the universe at the "Bounded, Boundless" solo exhibition.
With the theme of "Combining the fashion industry with NFT art and entering the metaverse to rejuvenate", Ms. Cheng Zhuo shared her experience and concepts at the forum: luxury brands entering the Web 3.0 can enhance the participation of young consumers and enhance brand affinity; the NFT that is rapidly out of the circle can help brands quickly break through the circle of new consumer groups, such as Generation Z and male consumers; at a time when the metaverse is still just a noun concept, the launch of digital collections should become a popular marketing behavior for luxury brands.
However, while expressing a positive and optimistic outlook, Ms. Cheng Zhuo also realistically pointed out the problems existing in the current fashion development of NFTs and metacosms:
· Poor practicality – at present, fashion sold through NFTs is the embodiment of fashion as an art form, not necessarily as a practical fashion product;
Lack of fashion touches – the NFT products that brands can currently sell are GIF pictures of clothing, and the user experience provided by current fashion NFT products lacks the fashion touches expected by luxury buyers;
· Poor user experience - taking Decentraland as an example, the style and texture of the fashion NFT products sold in the game are far from the real products, the clothing is highly cartoonish and pixelated, and the user experience of the game itself is not harmonious;
· Installing crypto wallets is troublesome – setting ethereum wallets in the browser has a learning threshold, and it is difficult to attract shoppers of ordinary luxury fashion brands;
· Visual effects don't match luxury positioning – top luxury brands such as Hermès, Chanel and Dior are not currently planning to enter the meta-universe, in large part because NFT's current visual style and tone, and the customer base they attract, do not match the luxury positioning that the brand adheres to;
· Many technologies have yet to be perfected – if you choose to add new accessories to people's PFPs, you will completely replace the original NFTs, which means that you can no longer go back to the original version;
· Infringement in the Metaverse – Copyright disputes in the real world also exist in the virtual world of the metaverse, and luxury and fashion brands are encountering more and more digital copyright protection issues. Brands should consider uniting to build a blockchain dedicated to luxury and fashion brands in the metaverse, register virtual trademarks, and all brands should be protected from misuse in the virtual world.
As the founder and CEO of Style3D of Lingdi Technology, Liu Chen is also a leader in the digital design and manufacturing of clothing. Style3D, which he founded, is currently the leading enterprise in China's clothing digital track, and has won many professional awards in the field of artificial intelligence, including "the most commercially promising technology enterprise in 2021".
Compared with the philosophical and planning thinking of the first two guests, Liu Chen shared more practical experience with the audience.
As an operator of enterprises and a provider of solutions, Liu Chen believes that from the industrial level, the essence of fashion is also an industry based on physical interaction at the prediction level. Brands predict the "future" and create and sell fashion products, a process that necessarily has a time lag with the "now", and the generation of inventory is inevitable. Therefore, there is a contradiction between the creation process of fashion and sustainable development. The metaverse superimposed by multiple technologies can essentially solve such contradictions.
For example, the research and development and use of natural fibers, the renewal and upgrading of traditional printing and dyeing processes, and the improvement of production efficiency. Fashion needs rapid iteration, research and development, the physical world of research and development will increase the cost of research and development, digital technology can solve the underlying problems, such as the design of sample clothes, change process, immediately meet the needs of rapid iteration of fashion. Coupled with the use of big data, the fashion industry can change the creation and production based on predictions to a model of rapid production of spot.
These are all sustainable shifts that the introduction of digital technologies can fundamentally bring to the fashion industry.
Liu Chen believes that it will take a long time to truly realize the metaverse. But that doesn't stop the underlying technology of the metaverse from changing real-life scenarios such as business and social networking, allowing people to demonstrate their personal attitudes in a digital, i.e., more sustainable way. And showing personal attitudes is also the fundamental reason why people need the fashion industry and products to exist.
In particular, it is worth mentioning that Style3D founded by Liu Chen is also an important strategic partner of Huayi Tomorrow All Media Group to enter the meta-universe. In the past two months, Liu Chen's team has used the technical capabilities of digital fashion to empower the fashion industry, and has cooperated deeply with Huayi Tomorrow All Media Group to launch the world's first sustainable fashion meta-universe magazine, and the two sides will continue to make efforts to digitize and provide content, strategy and technical diversified services for Chinese and even global fashion enterprises to enter the meta-universe.
Although the theme of this forum, "Fashion Metacosmity - A New Era of Sustainable Development", is full of futuristic feelings, the wonderful sharing of the guests allowed the audience to upgrade their thinking from imagining the future world of the combination of virtual and real to returning to the current situation of the industry itself, and realizing the upgrading of thinking between crisis and opportunity, virtual and real. Every rise of new concepts and technologies in human history may eventually achieve different results, but the similarities are "once again inspiring people to think about where they should go at this moment."
On April 24 at 15:00, the third forum "New Design: The Mission of a New Generation of Designers" will go live on time.
In this special session that brings together a new generation of Chinese designers, the discussion of fashion creativity and sustainable development will be directly oriented to the needs of Gen Z consumers, and the most forward-looking and future-proof ideas, forces and people will be closely connected here.
@WWD the official account of International Fashion News
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