Meta-fashion continues to grow in popularity

What is Meta-fashion, and what can it mean for the future of fashion?

That is a great question that has taken me a long time to answer. Watching fashion trends is one thing; however, watching fashion take its place in the metaverse is another. If you were like me and didn’t know what the metaverse was until this point, the best way I can describe it for fashion is it would be like playing Club Penguin and buying clothes for your penguin, but you, of course, will not get these clothes in real life. According to “Metav.rs,” this term is defined as “a shared digital space allowing people to interact in a virtual environment,” so kind of like Club Penguin or other computer games. It’s not an overtly new term in social media; however, it seems to find its way into the fashion industry.

Slowly, different fashion companies are learning different ways to interact with this concept of virtual fashion. For example, the collection between Ralph Lauren collaborated with Roblox, allowing players to buy the collection for their in-game avatars. This is not the only company to do this either; Nike has also collaborated with Roblox. The idea of digital fashion also branches out from the gaming world and into virtual reality, allowing people to try on new items and explore new aspects of the metaverse.

But this brings me to the next aspect of how fashion and metaverse intersect—I don’t think this is for our generation. Sure, some students could explain how the metaverse and other new tech phenomenon works better than I can, but the concept still seems out of grasp for most current students.

Talking with my friend who goes to the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), she agreed with this concept, saying that the idea of entirely virtual fashion is for the younger generation. All that being said, I don’t think the metaverse will eliminate fashion or eliminate fashion pollution. We need clothes, a person cannot be on the virtual forever, and humans need to sleep and go outside. The metaverse will add a new aspect for the younger generation to be raised in and adapt to. In contrast, for the older generations, it will be interesting to watch this concept grow, either by experiencing it or watching it from afar. Although I don’t think this will get rid of fashion pollution, it is still a step toward no longer producing dangerous fashion practices such as harmful textiles or unethical workplaces. It will not stop the simple idea of fast fashion.

In a history class, we have been studying the historical trend that unethical practices often follow the need to evolve for the growing economy, such as the demand for fast fashion. Overall, fashion in the metaverse is a deep rabbit hole that I could spend hours trying to understand. While I don’t think it harms the fashion industry and has the potential to harbor positivity, I don’t think it will ever cause a shift in how people consume fashion.