End of “phygital”, welcome to “metaphyigital” or tomorrow’s fashion era!
An empty pop-up store in New York has immersed visitors in the fashion week made in “Metaverse”!
THE FACT
From September 7 to 18, 2022, in the Soho district of New York, the ZERO10 fashion company specialized in augmented reality (AR) presented a collection of virtual or digital clothing in an empty pop-up created during fashion week. Made in large part by the New York design studio Crosby Studios , the pop-up ‘Metaphygital’ immerses or leaves visitors insensible, bystanders in fashion made in “Metaverse”. Indeed this empty store or shelves, neither employees nor porters nor crates can leave perplexed at first sight!
Wether you are a digital native or not, you have to scan QR codes written on the different walls. From there, customers enter in the smartphone application developed by ZERO10 and access a digital-only fashion collection. Thanks to the augmented reality technology, customers can try the 5 digital clothes with the help of a mirror designed for this purpose.
One of the pieces is a limited edition NFT collection. Of course you can buy the digital model directly from the app! This may seem uninteresting, conceptual… Nevertheless, behind this experience lies a whole new and flourishing market…
Decoding
If the store concept can make you smile, it’s a real “metaphysical” challenge based on astronomical sums!
McKinsey estimates the digital fashion market at $31 billion. According to the cabinet, gamers, influencers or new generations would be the ideal clientele to acquire her virtual clothes.
Millennials and Generation Z fully embrace the idea of 100% digitalized fashion and are active buyers of luxury products. They want to try something new and surprising to shine or enhance their status in these new virtual worlds or social networks. Generation Z mainly uses video on Snapchat or TikTok to communicate.
New fashion brands such as DRESSX or The Fabricant have understood this by investing this sector day after day while using verbatim and meaningful values for this new generation! Most of the messages of these young companies are against the old fashion world: push physical boundaries, allow personal expression in metaverse and promote sustainable fashion!
Richard Ma, CEO of a cybersecurity company, did not hesitate to buy his wife a long iridescent dress for $9,500. Its originality? It does not exist physically.
This dress named Iridescence is the first 100% virtual garment to be sold in the world. Designed by The Fabricant (Dutch start-up), it is only worn in augmented reality (AR) or by a digital avatar.
This digital fashion house, created in 2018, models 3D clothing with impressive realism.
This young company is growing and has established collaborations with big names like Adidas, Tommy Hilfiger, Under Armour, Versace, Puma and Buffalo London.
While this may seem irrational to many of us, in this virtual universe where everyone is represented by a digital character (gaming, metavers, social networks, etc.), appearance is essential: “Being able to shape and communicate your identity through fashion is just as important and relevant in the digital world as it is in the physical world.
Finally, these virtual and 3D models could become in the near future our ‘Fashion ID’ to allow us to try clothes with a 3D avatar tailored to our measurements! A new fashion story begins!
