Traditional Fashion Week Explores The Solution To The Dilemma Of Meta Universe

The autumn and winter fashion week of 2022 has ended. This year, due to the recurrent epidemic situation, inflation and the international political situation, the attention of the fashion week returning to the physical show has been sharply reduced.

However, the meta universe seems to have brought some new ideas to fashion week, and the New York Fashion Week in the face of "big brands running away" has found a new way to solve the dilemma.

New York holographic Fashion Week

New York Fashion came to an end last month in autumn and winter 2022.

Although Rodarte, an independent brand that has long been the focus of New York Fashion Week, has withdrawn from the physical show, But with the support of Yahoo holographic projection technology, they held a show belonging to the meta universe: Rodarte will 2010 for the film "black swan" design of a number of Ballerina sketches, through the projection technology of Yahoo, in the form of animation. The work was presented at the new technology experience of spring studios at New York Fashion Week on February 15 and was shown for four consecutive days.

Also involved in the project is another brand, Maisie wilen.

On February 16, Maisie wilen, in collaboration with Yahoo, brought ar viewing experience to the live audience and global smartphone users through holographic projection technology. It's also Maisie wile's first attempt at a holographic projection show.

In September 2021, American designer Rebecca Minkoff and Yahoo's ryot lab launched their first NFT series at New York Fashion Week in spring and summer 2022. The NFT project was released at that time, providing designers with digital versions of autumn and winter series and vacation series, so that live audiences and remote fans can experience the products through immersive online, holographic projection and ar.

In this season, Yahoo expanded the technology. Just like Maisie Wien, using Yahoo's multi-sensor capture system, transforms models in fashion shows into images in monster high, and further blurs the boundaries between reality and fantasy in the audience's eyes through a series of highly visual materials.

In the show, virtual models with blue-green body painting stand in a line, wearing party dresses of print and Internet style, and sometimes emit blue light or bubbles to pay homage to the virtual world.

In order to present realistic holograms and AR images on the show, Yahoo set up 106 cameras around the model in the studio space, capturing 360 degree images with 6K resolution, showing every detail of the clothes. The entire collection is also on sale at Yahoo shopping, where users can try on AR in their personal space.

Maisie Schloss, brand creative director, said in a behind the scenes video: "Fantasy is no longer limited to the real world. We have a whole new world."

In the meantime, another brand, imagine of Christ, produced a short video showing a series of virtual clothes. The second part of the video will be presented at metaverse fashion week, which is planned to be held in decentraland, an online virtual platform, in March this year.

Tombogo, an emerging fashion brand, cooperated with portl, a holographic technology company, to implement holographic projection technology at New York Fashion week. Portl captured human models to display holograms of equal scale, and the brand made 10 models of its "outside the box" neutral series on the holographic equipment at the same time.

Tommy BOGO, founder and creative director of the brand, said that the "outside the box" series was designed to explore new demands in the fashion field and also to stimulate the idea of getting rid of the industry limitations. Through holographic projection technology and the launch of the neutral collection, the brand is trying to break the tradition of fashion week.

In addition to being able to watch the show on the spot, high-definition images of models such as Junebug, yeek, Julius Caesar, Aerin creer, phabo and caleborate wearing new series of clothes in tombogo Los Angeles studio were also projected onto the portl machine on the scene of New York Fashion Week and presented to the global audience.

Traditional fashion week explores the meta universe

In addition to holographic projection technology, NFT, a hot digital product in recent years, also made its debut in this new york fashion week.

Altuzarra and Markarian cooperated with bubblehouse, an American token trading platform, to launch platform NFT products for the first time, which was released at New York Fashion week.

And behind the autumn and winter 2022 series released this time by Seoul Fashion Brand greedilous, there is AI's handwriting. In the new series of greedilous, artificial intelligence artist and designer Tilda provides patterns, prints and color schemes for the collection.

Tilda is from LG Group, a Korean technology company. According to LG, Tilda is good at illustration, collage and pattern design. It creates images through LG's multimodal and super large artificial intelligence modeling system exa one, which enables Tilda's "brain" to receive millions of data points.

It can be seen that in the past, no matter how digital technology develops and merges with the fashion industry, its ultimate goal is to enhance the creativity and work efficiency of human designers. But now is different from the past, the emergence of AI also adds more possibilities to the future of fashion industry.

It may be another attempt for fashion week to enter the era of "meta universe" by linking it with virtual game platform and NFT concept which has been popular in recent two years.

At this new york fashion week, Jonathan simkhai showed off the digital wearable device line of his ss2022 collection. This series is produced by blueberry entertainment, a digital wearable device production studio, and the Yuan Jie real estate investors and developers " CO produced by everyrealm. The designer's 11 new season looks were digitally reconstructed and launched the day before the brand entity show.

Instead of appearing at New York Fashion Week, Jonathan simkhai's fall / winter 2022 collection has made a "virtual launch.".

Brand and Virtual world pioneers in the 2000s Second life launched its own autumn and winter 2022 Series in the virtual world.

Second life is a virtual platform released in 2003. It has customizable roles and a series of accessories and clothing created by users. Wearable devices and clothing are the main products of the platform. According to the data, the scale of virtual economy on the platform of "second life" is as high as US $650 million.

Before the birth of twitter, "second life" was an information publishing platform for BBC, Reuters, CNN and other international mainstream media. IBM also purchased real estate in the game and built its own sales center.

In this cooperation, blueberry, a digital wearable device company founded by Mishi McDuff, helps simkhai transform physical fashion into virtual clothing, which is sold on the virtual platform as a digital version for characters to wear in the virtual world. Some of the new products can also be traded and sold on the platform in the form of NFT. Jonathan simkhai himself is very optimistic about this release, which he believes is a way to break the stereotypes of fashion, explore new worlds, and acquire new customers at the same time.

"Technology integration is not a guarantee of success, but in a way it brings new life to an industry that is beginning to feel stagnant," drabicky, chief executive of consulting firm January digital, said in an interview with WWD

According to drabicky, the outbreak is a wake-up call for many retailers who rely on decades old models and old methods. When customers' consumption behavior and living habits change, retailers need to really start innovation, which is undoubtedly a very necessary return.

Can technology save fashion week

In the second half of 2021, many physical fashion shows including New York, London, Milan and Paris show that the fashion industry has temporarily returned to the new normal. However, a new round of Omicron epidemic started at the end of last year has once again disrupted the rhythm of offline fashion week planned to be held in January and February.

Before this season's New York Fashion Week, Tom Ford announced that the new series could not be completed in time due to the serious epidemic situation in Los Angeles where the brand design department is located and Italy, where the production factory is located, and had to cancel participating in this fashion week; Thom Browne also postponed the brand's autumn winter collection to April 29, which is closer to met Gala. Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger and Marc Jacobs were also absent from the New York Fashion week. Michael kors, Christian Siriano and Tory Burch are the remaining few players who normally participate.

However, on the other hand, it is also an opportunity for young and new independent designers to leave. Among the four fashion weeks, New York Fashion Week has always been the more fashionable and experimental one. New technology is undoubtedly more in line with the expression of young designers. Independent designer brands such as Tadashi Shoji, Brandon Maxwell, William Frederick clothing and other independent designer brands convey their fashion values in the show through various ways.

It is not new to apply cutting-edge technologies such as AR to fashion week. At the previous fall / winter 2022 London Fashion Week, roksanda launched three limited edition NFT products in collaboration with clearpay, the main sponsor of London Fashion week. One of the 3D garment animation renderings can be worn in the meta universe environment. A digital version of Demi couture is also available for the final styling of the brand's autumn / winter 2022 release show, which has AR function. Customers can "try on" the cloud after the entity show.

New York Fashion Week has always held an open and inclusive attitude towards cutting-edge technologies. This year is also a step forward for New York Fashion week to "holographic" fashion week and "meta universe" fashion week. However, it is still too early to see whether it can regain its influence through this bail-out.

According to Schwartz of everyrealm, the purpose of virtual presentation is not to replace the real world events, but to supplement the real world, so that artists and designers have the opportunity to try without being limited by the real world. Through virtual and digital technology, fashion presentation is no longer confined to the traditional fashion week release mode. Where the collision of fashion and technology will take the industry is not known.