The fashion and luxury industries are keen to reiterate that the metaverse is destined to be an integral part of their future. As the interest in new virtual worlds seems to be fading, players in both sectors actually intend to take full advantage of the metaverse’s infinite possibilities. A second Metaverse Fashion Week (MFW) will in fact be held in spring 2023.

We are pretty much back to where we started. One year after a first, rather lacklustre experiment, MFW is back. Once again, Decentraland will have the honour of hosting some of the top fashion labels in one of its parallel worlds, at the end of the (real) fashion week season, which will be drawing crowds from New York to Paris in February and March.

The second edition of MFW is scheduled on March 28-31 2023. In parallel, Miami Fashion Week will stage special runways shows, as the first fashion week officially recognised by the Council of Fashion Designers of America that will participate in MFW, reflecting the growing interest in virtual reality within the fashion and luxury industries.

Fashion heads for the metaverse

Contrary to what some may think, the Web3 revolution could well be under way, or at least in its early days. Because the latest fashion industry news seems to suggest that the sector’s main players do believe in the metaverse, and intend to take full advantage of its opportunities as they carry out their experiments. In addition to being an arena for virtual collections, NFTs and forays into the gaming world, the metaverse is also proving to be an amazing showcase for labels and retailers, a domain in which they can present their collections, whether real or virtual, as well as specific products, from limited editions to collaborations. All of these will undoubtedly take centre stage at the next MFW.

This new iteration of the fashion week concept has been developed in partnership with UNXD and the Spatial and Over metaverse domains. Its theme will be “Future Heritage,” with the objective of linking up the next generation of designers, presumably more digitally proficient, with designers that could be defined as traditional. As they did last year, users will be able to attend shows, hop from a runway to a luxury shopping mall, and of course buy physical and digital clothes in NFT form or not, as the case may be. MFW will also partner with DressX, a digital apparel specialist.

108,000 visitors in the first edition

“I am incredibly honoured to be leading the second annual Metaverse Fashion Week (…). Within one year, we have shown the world one of the strongest and most obvious use cases for the metaverse yet - digital fashion. After all, we don’t all want to look like dull copies of the same avatar in our digital lives. Just like in the real world, we all want to individualise and curate the personal aesthetics that we are recognised for,” said Giovanna Graziosi Casimiro, head of MFW.

Decentraland has not yet published the names of the labels that will attempt this second metaverse experiment. Dolce & Gabbana, Tommy Hilfiger, Selfridges, Guo Pei and Paco Rabanne were among the main names that took part in MFW’s first edition. In total, more than 108,000 people took part in the event - a number that is still small in terms of the expectations that some appear to have for these new virtual worlds.