Metaverse Newsletter Vol. 1
Metaverse Fashion Week Recap
“We’ve sought to present fashion in every form possible, from runway shows to retail experiences, fashion presented as art, film, photography, and even fashion presented in ways that extend beyond the confines of reality—as, in the metaverse, anything is possible.” - David Cash
Over the course of March 24 - 27, Decentraland played host to Metaverse fashion week 2022. With 60+ participating brands, artists and designers, the event saw numerous runway shows, immersive experiences, after-parties, shopping, panel talks, surprise collaborations and much more. The series of fashion-focused events, which ended Sunday, attracted a wide variety of brands and creatives, including Etro, Dundas, Dolce & Gabbana and Estée Lauder. Still, some notable players in the metaverse, including Gucci and Ralph Lauren, did not participate. The entire experience was blockchain-based, created on land sold as NFTs and digital fashion bought and worn as NFTs.
Decentraland shared that the platform saw 108,000 unique attendees throughout MVFW. While that’s not relegated only to fashion events, that’s compared to 40,000 people who attended an October music festival, which was also four days, and regularly 500,000 monthly active users. Numbers on digital fashion purchases were not yet available from participating brands.
Morgan Stanley estimates that for luxury goods alone, metaverse gaming and NFTs could constitute 10% of the market by 2030, marking a €50 billion revenue opportunity and 25 per cent lift to the industry's profit pool. When Roksanda created NFTs with the Institute of Digital Fashion during London Fashion Week, searches for the brand jumped 76 per cent on Lyst, according to the brand. Similarly, when Diesel announced at Milan Fashion Week it would release NFTs in addition to physical clothes, brand searches increased 41 per cent. When Balenciaga appeared in Fornite in October, views of the brand in the Lyst app more than doubled.
Cats, in place of models, walked the Dolce & Gabbana catwalk. All of the models on the Unxd-curated runway could fly after emerging out of model-sized blooming lotuses, and walked in a vast venue that resembled an Olympics opening ceremony arena with music-coordinated light shows to match. An after-party from Hogan included a dance-off, and each attendee could programme their avatar to dance using a customisable series of moves, regardless of footwear or outfit limitations.
Designer Phillipp Plein, who put on a show and a DJ set, says that the event attracted both new fans and brought existing fans onto the platform. “Lifestyle space” D-Cave and Bulova partnered on a space selling Decentraland wearables, and hosted an event with virtual fashion platform Vogue. Participants were in “the hundreds,” says Stefano Rosso, co-founder and CEO of D-Cave. Ross is also the CEO of BVX, the metaverse business unit of OTB, parent company of Diesel, Maison Margiela, Marni; and a board member of Aura Blockchain Consortium. He says that they sold “a good amount” of unique NFTs with Bulova and some other wearables.
Events in particular work well to attract visitor traffic, says Andrew Kiguel, CEO of Tokens.com, which owns the metaverse real estate for the fashion district. “It is amazing to see so many brands validating the metaverse as a new venue for advertising and reaching consumers.”
Metaverse Headlines
Nreal, a maker of augmented reality glasses, received a $60 million backing by Alibaba after a previous investment of $100 million last September by Nio Capital and Sequoia China valued the company at $700 million. Alibaba’s investment in Nreal could hint toward a collaboration between the two given the start-up’s work with its other investors. For example, Nreal and Nio last year announced AR glasses tailored for electric vehicles. This investment indicates a clear indication that Chinese technology giants are jostling for opportunities in the metaverse space.
Siam Commercial, the Bangkok-listed lender in which Thailand’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn is the largest shareholder, joins HSBC Holdings Plc and JPMorgan Chase & Co. in foraying into metaverse. SCB 10X Co., which oversees Siam Commercial Bank Pcl’s investments in technology startups, will become the first banking group entity globally to develop a headquarters in The Sandbox, a blockchain-based virtual platform, it said in a statement on Monday. The virtual space will be ready for public visits by the fourth quarter of this year, it said.
Music fans can expect more than six hours of performance from international artists on August 13. Topping the bill are Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike, DJ Wolfpack, DJ Makasi, DJ FRIDAYYY & AOORA, Botcash, YoungOhm and a “special guest from South Korea”. The Hype Type Metaverse Concert will also feature non-fungible tokens (NFTs), cryptocurrency and virtual shops, CEO of concert organizer ‘A Plano Tech’ Kalyawee Chumphon na Ayutthaya said. Ticket holders can participate in the concert via VR headsets, smartphones or computers while Metaverse technology will enable concert goers to dress up and interact with others while the artists perform in front of them.??
Jungho Rhee, chief executive of Mirae Assets Global Investments Hong Kong, said green mobility and the metaverse were key themes transforming the global economy. The global metaverse active ETF provides exposure to the evolving metaverse growth drivers. Its largest holdings include New York-listed groups Nvidia and Microsoft, as well as China’s acoustic component company Goertek. The Korean fund firm had about $236bn in assets under management globally as of December 2021. It offers almost 400 ETFs globally with a combined total of about $85.8bn in assets under management.