Welcome to Decentraland! This is the portal into the first-ever Metaverse Fashion Week.
Because I’m a gal supposedly on the pulse of innovation and excitement in fashion, I naturally decided to dive right in. The premise of fashion in the metaverse is still in its infancy, given Meta (née Facebook) hasn’t launched its Second Life promise of a platform. We know not what form that takes and no doubt it will see mass participation down the line. Until that day comes, the metaverse seems to exist in the nether regions of bro-dominated Discord forums, NFT Clubhouse chats and nascent platforms such as Decentraland. Metaverse Fashion Week is thus an experiment and a learning curve. And predictably, there’s a lot to learn.
After less than an hour, two reboots of my MacBook Pro, trying different browsers to watch ‘shows’ staged by Etro and Dolce & Gabbana (which is personally problematic given the track record of Stefano Gabbana’s social media rants), I ended up trotting back to good ol’ YouTube. Once there, I revelled in Nineties catwalk footage like a curmudgeonly hack who rejoices in the glory years of fashion, back when they flew in by helicopter to shows.
I’m in that generation caught between the IRL world and the rapacious onslaught of the internet, so MVFW should be right up my street. But alas I found it wanting. First, the technical lag gave me click rage when I tried to move two steps and wound up accidentally clicking on other people’s avatars with questionable facial hair. My motion graphics designer baby sister, with her giant PC tower and top notch graphics card, had a go and found the ‘user experience badly optimised for web’. In plain speak? ‘It looks like it’s for kids.’ My daughter peered over but lost interest in 30 seconds.
I’m confused as to why the look of things has regressed to a time when I’d slowly load The Sims 2 on a school PC
More importantly, the clothes — because erm, the clothes are still somewhat the point — were, to be blunt, crap. I’m confused as to why the look of everything has regressed to a time when I’d slowly load The Sims 2 on a school PC. I’m also pretty sure the outfits were cuter back then. Is this the future? Or a retro future? Oh wait, is this some deliberate revival of a Y2K aesthetic? My avatar’s eyebrows were quizzically raised as I wandered around aimlessly watching a model with a cat’s head fly off an Olympics-sized catwalk in a logo-clad, bulbous puffer jacket. Sure, you can’t quite recreate that in reality (unless you had some serious jet packs) but judging by the Cyberdog-esque proportions, I’m not sure I want to unless I’m looking for a take on Judy Jetson.
This is supposed to be a new frontier for fashion. As someone helpfully DM-ed me, ‘Embrace it or get left behind.’ I was well up for entering realms where my little Web2 mindset would be blown and where I’d theoretically splash out on some supernatural ensemble for my avatar self — preferably with wings, a floating cloud skirt with every Pantone colour flashing before my eyes. Auroboros, a tech couture house at this new vanguard, with its iridescent 3D textures and shape-shifting silhouettes, closed the event with a performance by a Grimes avatar soaring in an X-Meninspired Mystique bodysuit. ‘Technology has been for a specific type of person for too long, it needs to diversify,’ the co-founders said recently in an interview with Dazed. ‘We encourage fashion fans to think of technology (or the metaverse) as a form of magic.’
So like the wide-eyed manga stares of my avatar, I await hopeful, ready with a more powerful graphics card.
