Nifty news: Luxury brands join Decentraland‘s metaverse fashion week

This past weekend, Decentraland hosted the Metaverse Fashion Week, or MVFW, a four-day digital fashion event that staged wearables on virtual runways, organized discussion panels and housed shopping experiences. A lineup of both legacy luxury labels and digital brands participated including Dolce & Gabbana, Etro, Tommy Hilfiger, Estée Lauder and Elie Saab.

Meanwhile, digital-native fashion houses Auroboros, DressX and republiqe hosted immersive spaces and stores within specific fashion districts designated by coordinates on a map. Just like New York Fashion Week where events may take place across different city boroughs, so did Decentraland‘s MVFW, which materialized across different districts. 

Dolce & Gabbana puts on a literal catwalk 

Dolce & Gabanna unveiled 20 full looks of Metaverse wearables that they specifically designed for the Metaverse Fashion Week. Playing on the term catwalk, they used cat-faced avatar models to showcase the collection. After the show, the full collection became viewable in an exclusive Dolce & Gabbana pop-up in Decentraland’s Luxury Fashion District, curated by luxury-focused marketplace UNXD. UNXD, as well as Vogue Arabia, were core partners of Decentraland in curating the traditional fashion brands at MVFW.

Recently, Dolce & Gabbana sold a series of nonfungible tokens (NFTs) for about $6 million as part of another collection co-created with UNXD. D&G‘s next step into the Metaverse is the launch of the DGFamily NFT Community, which intends to give members exclusive access to physical and digital drops and wearables. DGFamily holders will receive airdrops from this MVFW collection. 

Etro debuts upcoming collection on the runway

Etro, on the other hand, decided to preview a real-world collection for their first fashion show in the Metaverse. Called Liquid Paisley, the collection consists of women‘s and men‘s ready-to-wear looks worn by 20 avatar models and celebrates one of the fashion house‘s iconic prints and color palettes. It also includes a range of must-have accessories, bags, hats and shoes. In partnership with UNXD, Etro also set up a pop-up boutique in the UNXD Luxury District full of other designer brand names.

Cointelegraph spoke to Shashi Menon, Dubai-based publisher of Vogue Arabia and co-founder and CEO of UNXD, about why so many luxury brands are jumping onto the Metaverse bandwagon. Menon said the idea to launch a proper fashion week “was the best starting point because it resembled something familiar.” According to him, “the best way to get people into a space they are unfamiliar with is to use something that they are familiar with.”

Italian shoe brands enter Decentraland

Two other Italian brands, Hogan and Giuseppe Zanotti, debuted NFT collections. In collaboration with Exclusible, a platform for luxury NFTs and metaverse activations, TOD‘S Group-owned Hogan dropped the “Untraditional” NFT collection of the brand’s first-ever sneaker. They set up a pop-up store residency in Decentraland within Boson Protocol‘s metaverse marketplace in order to sell its physical products as redeemable NFTs within the Boson Portal. The creative studio Braw Haus chose the five NFT artists that designed the collection.

Similarly, Italian footwear designer Giuseppe Zanotti released a series of sneaker NFTs for MVFW in partnership with the blue-chip NFT community DeadFellaz and the neuno NFT marketplace. This collaboration offers limited-edition digital-only Giuseppe Zanotti COBRAS sneakers. Zanotti originally released the physical version of these bright green shoes with the snake detail in 2021. While Deadfellaz is also offering physical garments through Boson Protocol, neuno is giving its neuCard VIP members a green bucket hat, two shirts and a bomber jacket to go with the COBRAS.

Republique sells luxury accessories 

Metaverse-ready fashion house republiqe partnered with a Paris-based e-commerce platform called Monnier to launch a virtual accessories store within Decentraland’s Luxury Fashion District. American brand COACH was among the brands in the store to convert an existing physical item into an NFT wearable. Republiqe helped to create COACH’s first-ever NFT of its “Pillow Tabby Shoulder” handbag.

Known as a clothing brand, republiqe showcased five bespoke outfits for its store and worked with other brands including Axel Arigato, Ester Manas, Wandler and Osoi. This virtual shop allows Decentraland users to walk in, view and purchase any of the designer apparel.

Other Nifty news

Fashion NFTs are clearly a big trend as more and more mainstream designers debut NFT collections in the Metaverse this year. And, as fashionistas increasingly use NFTs to express their style on Web3 platforms and in the real world, the future of digital fashion will be likely favorable to those with the first-mover advantage. 

In addition to runway shows in Decentraland, DressX worked with Fendi to design digital garments used in an interview spread for fashion magazineHaute Living in January. It was the first fashion magazine cover in the United States to display digital luxury designer garments on a human, and the designs could then be purchased directly on the Fendi website.