Why Is Fashion So Obsessed with the Metaverse?

The freedom from “standard-ass crap” is the reason someone like Hackl says, “I haven’t felt this excitement about fashion and technology ever.” Forget wearing a slightly different hoodie—the appeal of the

metaverse, its proselytes say, is the way an avatar releases a user from physical realities. “It’s about unleashing creativity, pushing limits, right?” says Hackl. (Anecdotally, immolation seems to be a popular dream. Three different people I spoke to brought up the possibility of walking around engulfed, either partially or completely, in flames.) “Younger generations have always pushed limits. I think it’s part of embracing that rebellion: how are they expressing themselves in these virtual spaces?” Young people will always test boundaries in the physical world, she says, “but they’re also going to test those in the virtual spaces and see, what can I do? What can I build? How can I outfit my avatar, or what creator’s fashion am I going to buy that’s going to allow me to push the limits of how I express myself?” RTFKT’s cofounders even suggested that users have started making changes to their physical wardrobes and appearances to better reflect their digital avatars.

The fashion industry is also nervous about neglecting a community of future consumers. Typically, brands ignore customers outside their highly prescribed comfort zone until they are unable to—until, in other words, it’s convenient and profitable to engage with new potential customers. Fashion is an organic presence on platforms like Fortnite, where the kinds of boundary-pushing looks Hackl describes are already part of the experience. In April, for example, a creator named Lachlan staged a virtual fashion show, in which a giant sock monkey hopped on a pogo stick, a banana wore a tuxedo, and a player dressed as Guns n Roses guitarist Slash, only with a chiseled jaw and a chunky blonde bob. Balenciaga, with its September collaboration, merely stepped in to take formal advantage of that fandom.

But, Hackl contends, “Any fashion brand, any fashion house, needs to start to think about, what is their meta strategy?” Hackl says. “What does the brand become in the metaverse? What does it translate to? They will not be able to sell, they will not be able to keep their legacy status or be top of mind, if they do not engage the community that already inhabits these spaces.”

That may take less cajoling than metaverse skeptics think. Excepting Balenciaga, we might find it hard to believe that rarefied European luxury houses would associate themselves with tech nerds and gamers, but in fact, brands from Burberry to H&M are already calling on companies like Dimension Studios “to create digital humans, to create digital fashion and to present that in what is becoming known as the metaverse,” explains Dimension's managing director and cofounder Simon Windsor. Dimension worked on Balenciaga’s Afterworld show, for example, making the clothing photorealistic in its texture and color and rendering a futuristic world in which users could move the camera anywhere within the space, which “gives [Balenciaga] the ability to tell stories or bring experiences to life with complete creative freedom that traditional photography or filming wouldn't normally achieve that.” In other words, another major appeal of the metaverse is the way it enables fantasy—a word that fashion designers might be keen to embrace at this moment. More than ever, runway fashion is a conceptual, unattainable dream, the aura of which is used to push consumers towards logo hoodies, T-shirts, handbags,and sneakers. But the metaverse makes the possibility of selling their more ridiculous creations much more real, even if in digital form.