Fashion in the Metaverse comes alive! The recently concluded New York Fashion week included an impressive and unique fashion show, which featured 7-foot tall holographic models instead of real people sashaying down the ramp. As the fashion industry looks towards embracing the Metaverse as a digital future, Designer Maisie Schloss’ digitally crafted prints and cyber inspired partywear gave viewers a glimpse of what to expect as the future of fashion.
Digital Fantasy Comes Alive in the Metaverse
Her collection at the New York Fashion Week was inclined to digital fantasy, featuring digital models lined up in a row, performing a series of repetitive motions, giving one the impression of being inside a GIF playbook.
Some of the “models” featured body paint, fins, and creature ears, rotated in thin air, emitting shocks of blue lightning and bubbles.
Schloss’ collection featured some of the models wearing VR glasses, and others featured a retro look. In a collaboration with Yahoo, Schloss was quoted as saying they really wanted to “push the whole fantasy of what we can create”. Continuing on the theme, she also said “ What makes something real feel as if it’s unreal?”.
The unusual element of the show was its hybrid nature, allowing home-viewers and in-person attendees both, to experience the possibilities of fashion in a virtual setting. The entire collection that was showcased at the New York Fashion Week has been made available on a shoppable website made by Yahoo, that features AR models that can be placed in a viewers’ personal space.
The head of the Content Innovation team at Yahoo, Nigel Tierney, stated that the show created a new experience that was very different from traditional show-viewings.
While also mentioning how viewers can play with assets in their environment, Tierney also explained how they were looking at stepping into the Metaverse, and what that would mean to individual brands.
Some brands have already started to step into the Metaverse by releasing their collections as digital NFT garments alongside their physical collections.
To create the larger-than-life holograms and AR imaging for the show, the team from Yahoo set up 106 cameras around the models in a studio space, capturing 360 imaging in super sharp 6K resolution to show every detail of the clothes on display. The designer felt that the unique experience was almost like living in a virtual playbook, showcasing the designs in an unbelievable, yet larger-than-life technique.
