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 republique hosted immersive spaces and stores within specific fashion districts, designated by coordinates on a map. Just like New York Fashion Week events may take place across different boroughs of the city, so did Decentraland’s MVFW materialize across different districts.

Main venue for runway shows. Source: UNXD

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 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.

#DolceGabbana showcases at the First Metaverse Virtual Fashion Week hosted by @decentraland in partnership with @unxd_nft.

Enter the metaverse and explore the Dolce&Gabbana pop-up at https://t.co/intOw2lxfy pic.twitter.com/pjo7rn4BMQ

— Dolce & Gabbana (@dolcegabbana) March 25, 2022

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.

@EtroOfficial revealed the Liquid Paisley collection at the Metaverse Fashion Week, in partnership with @UNXD_NFT. Be sure to visit the boutique in the Luxury District!
These wearables will be airdropped to Decentraland users. Submit your wallet address below by March 31! pic.twitter.com/hHqicwZh1i

— Decentraland (@decentraland) March 26, 2022

Cointelegraph spoke to Shashi Menon, the Dubai-based publisher of Vogue Arabia and UNXD’s co-founder and CEO, 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,” and 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.