THE JOURNAL
Afterworld: The Age Of Tomorrow, Balenciaga AW21 video game. Photograph courtesy of Balenciaga
With a name like “the metaverse”, it should have been cooler. The title alone conjures ideas of alternative dimensions, new realities and the limitless possibilities of the digital age. What’s materialised, to date, hasn’t exactly matched that, particularly when it comes to the fashion world.
Last spring, when the concept of metaverses first broke into the mainstream after years spent languishing in obscurity on the weirdo fringes of tech, the idea of virtual fashion was broadly and swiftly written off as a symptom of collective lockdown insanity, like home haircuts, the Houseparty app and curated Zoom backgrounds. Sure, it enjoyed a brief spell as a cultural talking point (including our own investigation in The Journal), but it seemed destined to fade out when we all returned to our senses and our offices.
Even later that year, when a sale of virtual sneakers by the digital brand RTFKT Studios raised more than $3m in less than 10 minutes, it failed to convince most. Onlookers largely rolled their eyes at the idea that anyone would buy clothes that didn’t exist in the physical world, or that anyone could refer to their own avatar with a straight face. When the youth culture website Hypebeast covered RTFKT’s rapid ascent, it was met with almost unanimous derision. “This might,” one particularly hyperbolic commentator wrote, “be the cringiest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life.”
The temptation to scoff is understandable. Some of the fashion world’s entries into the virtual world have been laughably off-key, with a distinct dad-at-the-party vibe in their clunky, gimmicky designs.
Moreover, for those of us who have lived through so many would-be Next Big Things – from Neopets to Google glasses – there was a sinking sense of familiarity. The idea that digitally rendered clothing, which doesn’t exist anywhere but online, would explode in popularity seemed optimistic at best. And that was before Mr Mark Zuckerberg released his instantly infamous, wince-inducing promotional clip for Meta. Is our next big leap into virtual reality doomed to be so terminally uncool?
“Virtual sneakers represent the zenith (or nadir) of hype culture, when even the intangible ‘idea’ of a sneaker can cause hysteria”
Not necessarily. At the tail end of 2021, Nike announced that it was making an unprecedented acquisition of RTFKT, for an undisclosed sum. That puts RTFKT in the company of other Nike-owned labels, Converse and Umbro. Not to be outdone, adidas announced only a week afterwards that it, too, would be entering the metaverse, through a series of digital works to be sold as non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Not long after that, the brand also announced a Metaverse-exclusive collaboration with Prada.
It’s not just the sneaker brands. Gucci, too, made headlines in February when it bought a plot of virtual land from which to host experiences for its customers. A store that exists only within the metaverse is, apparently, set to follow.
adidas for Prada re-source NFT project in collaboration with digital artist Mr Zach Lieberman. Photograph courtesy of adidas Originals
Evidently, then, it’s not going anywhere. So is it time to throw scepticism aside and join the gold rush? Fifty years from now, will the hesitant among us be left looking like those who didn’t believe that photography or jazz music would ever take off? Or should we cling to our cynicism, duck down and wait for the whole thing to blow over?
It’s a question of where you look. Among the daftness is a raft of intriguing new developments. The possibilities inherent within digital design are boundless. We’ve already seen virtual sneakers that unfold, Transformers-like, into machines and digitally rendered clothing that defies gravity in its construction. And it’s there, arguably, that their value lies. Rather than thinking of these creations as novelties and gewgaws, consider them as art-historical curios and emblems of this particularly bizarre period in history.
They pose a fascinating opportunity, too, for designers and creators. If you remove every physical restriction from the design process – materials, cost, durability, practicality – what could our clothing look like?
“Our digital selves do exist. Isn’t it about time our virtual avatars reflected more of who we are?”
Balenciaga, the fashion house helmed by the Georgian designer Mr Demna Gvasalia, sits at the forefront of this new frontier. Gvasalia came of age during the late 1990s, under the clear influence of films The Matrix and Blade Runner. But in those films, where others saw dystopia, he saw possibility. Over the past year, Gvasalia has pushed his designs beyond the physical world, from creating a Balenciaga video game in which to show his collections to outfitting the animated cast of The Simpsons in pieces from his latest line. It’s easy to write these off as marketing stunts, but they have proved successful at expanding the boundaries of his creative output.
The problem, perhaps, is that the idea of virtual fashion, appearing as it did alongside the rise of NFTs, has become so bound up in the idea of products that people can own. It’s why so many digital “releases” feel so cynical. But it doesn’t have to. RTFKT’s virtual sneakers, for instance, represent the zenith (or, depending on your perspective, the nadir) of hype sneaker culture, when even the intangible “idea” of a sneaker can cause hysteria. As the brand’s founders put it, in an interview given last year, their products are “more real than reality”.
Besides, our digital selves do exist. It’s evident in the way we curate our Instagram pages, in the careful editing of how we present ourselves online. And as bleak as it might be to acknowledge it, the time we spend online each day is accelerating exponentially. Isn’t it about time our virtual avatars reflected more of who we are?
Ultimately, all this navel gazing is unlikely to have an impact on the future of digital fashion. With tech giants pumping untold billions into the infrastructure of the metaverse and brands of all stripes jumping on the bandwagon for fear of being left behind, the short-term prospects of this emerging sector are as good as guaranteed. Whether all this investment brings about a creative revolution in fashion – and whether the metaverse will ever capture that most intangible of assets, cool – remains to be seen.