Metaverse Could Disrupt Fashion as Much as Streetwear, Say Speakers at Paris Conference
PARIS — “Community is probably the keyword in the metaverse,” said Michaela Larosse, head of strategy of digital fashion creation studio The Fabricant, speaking at a panel here on fashion and the metaverse during “Le Book Connections Paris,” a trade fair dedicated to creative industries.
The openness to creatives from all walks of life was one a key takeaway of the 90-minute discussion moderated by James Joseph, founder of futurism and tech culture-oriented magazine Cybr. Speakers included Larosse; Karinna Nobbs, co-founder of blockchain-backed marketplace The Dematerialised; Luc Jodet, a co-founder of French blockchain specialist Arianee; Benoit Pagotto, co-founder of crypto fashion brand Rtfkt, and OTB board member Stefano Rosso.
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The field remains so new that early players like the companies represented on the panel had to “create an industry to exist in,” as Larosse put it. A major challenge was the interest of mainstream consumers in digital fashion, which despite being a hot topic within the industry, remains low in demand.
“Regular fashion customers think that digital fashion is not for them because it’s just shiny materials or a certain aesthetic. We need more creatives and more brands to provide a wider variety,” said Nobbs.
For Rosso, whose latest venture Brave Virtual Experiences, or BVX just launched, “the way fashion companies are so unaware of what it takes to be a player in this space is shocking.” Describing many tools and interactions available today as gamified experiences, he pointed to gamers as the vanguard for many of these services and usages.
Anyone wondering about the impact of a digital lifestyle need only look at the virtual-only sneaker concept Rtfkt added to Elon Musk’s Met Gala outfit, which went viral despite being merely Photoshopped mock-ups. “If the internet says it’s real then it’s more real than what is happening in the real world,” said co-founder Pagotto, who weighed up their stunt’s 200 million views on the internet against the 1,000 guests of the gala.
According to Larosse, tools also represented a major barrier for entry to consumers, creators and brand alike. As a consequence, “the pain point [for labels] is just being able to build long-term strategies to participate in digital fashion. Everybody is doing one-off experimental jobs, with no intention to pursue it for the long term,” she said.
That said, she still believed “physical brands should begin to transition physical inventory into the digital world and really [place] the focus on digital fashion as a source of revenue,” as she expects the platforms that compose today’s premise to the metaverse to eventually link up into an interconnected landscape.
Which brought up another challenge: the ability to port items between digital universes, say from one game to another. “There isn’t a lot of incentive [to offer portability],” Nobs admitted. Rosso concurred, adding that demand “needs to come from users because they are the game-changers.”
Despite these challenges, all believed the future remains bright.
Given that brands mentioned during the session included mainstream heavyweights Puma, Tommy Hilfiger and Diesel, as well as luxury watchmaker Breitling, possibilities certainly felt plentiful — particularly for those willing to straddle the physical-digital divide.
“Too often when we talk about the metaverse, we’re only talking about one aspect — making nice 3D objects or using AR — but the metaverse goes beyond this,” said Jodet, who went on to detail possible new usages such as “anonymous clienteling.”
This centered the customer relationship experience on a digital passport for the object, rather than the collection of personal data. “And that really comes from [a key element of] luxury, which is discretion. You don’t need to know everything about your customer [for] the true luxury experience,” Jodet concluded.
One aspect had all speakers agreeing on: opportunity — for businesses, of course, but also for individual creators.
“Brands need to start becoming more open” to the idea of user-generated additions to their repertoire, Rosso said after the conference, although he nuanced this by saying that how open would depend on each brand’s identity.
Nobbs expressed the belief that established brands, particularly those with a history in the physical world, would not necessarily continue to lead, saying that “it’s exciting to think that some kid we’ve never even heard of, equipped with a WiFi connection, a phone and a laptop, is about to become the next big digital fashion brand.”
It was even plainer for Pagotto. Signatures emerging in this space were considerably more free than existing brands weighed down by their heritage.
Existing fashion labels would need to open up hiring to nontraditional profiles, such as gamers, if they wanted to continue to exist, let alone thrive. His prediction: “with NFT space and digital fashion, you’re going to have what happened in streetwear — times a million.”
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