Papa Don't Preach: First Fashion House in Metaverse

It’s not every day that you get a chance to suspend the laws of reality to create a window into a place that doesn’t exist. Papa Don’t Preach, along with the fantastic and driven women at House of Krifin and Women Economic Forum had the privilege of peeking into a ‘Cohesive and Sustainable World in the Digital Era.’

Somewhere over a rigorous seven month process of trial and error with 3D scans and technical glitches, Papa Don’t Preach became the first label in the world to bring intricate hand embroidery into the metaverse on Decentraland. Being the “first” came with profoundly confusing challenges because we didn’t have a precedent to learn from.

Several hundred 3D scans of embellished lehengas and signature silhouettes later, we managed to get a near precise representation of 6 out of 8 ensembles and compromised on the intricate, nuanced details that could not be actualized in the metaverse like the holographic reflection of sequins and glass beading playing with sunlight, bold shades gently peeking through five layers of voluminous fabric.?

In separating the tangibility of fashion from the intangible essence of the metaverse, we learned what Rilke meant when he said, “the purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.”

We allowed ourselves to be defeated by concepts that were technologically advanced. Being ahead of the curve comes with not having a defined path to go forward, and thus, involves stumbling your way to the discovery of the “unknown.” The constructed metaverse, StarAtlas, couldn’t handle more than a few viewers at a time owing to bandwidth issues and the lack of 5G in India. The simple fact is, that the hardware hasn’t caught up with the software. This challenged our efforts to create an immersive experience for as many people as possible because viewers could not access the full potential of the metaverse without a private key, which isn’t available to the masses as yet.

As a brand that celebrates diversity and inclusivity, we were limited to our choice of avatars, which lacked humanism and diversity. Avatars, like NFTs, are one-of-one, they cannot be edited or duplicated. Each layer of realism added to an avatar strains the limited bandwidth.

We allowed ourselves to be defeated because the ultimate victory came with the optimization of a sustainable approach at the intersection of art and technology. On average, the design process uses over 350 different types of embroidery, five fabric variations along with heaps of pre-emptive production, based on assumed customer reactions, all to produce one lehenga. In a collection of 64 pieces, many are doomed to be ‘dead-stock.’?The metaverse grants us the luxury of creating entire collections digitally - which, reduces Co2 emissions by 97%, and allows for customization and recreation based on client’s feedback.

The digital landscape is very much still a work in progress, but the end result is a dimension where imagination takes center stage, unencumbered by the limitations of physical reality. That’s why we’re proud to be the first Indian label to take a chance on the unknown, the undiscovered potential of the metaverse. With that, we officially welcome everyone to be a part of this journey, with a collection of NFTs, minted in Etherium and available to view through House of Krifin.

Note: A metaverse is when you, as a person, can go inside a digital environment on a blockchain ledger along with a ‘skin’ for your avatar. The NFTs created by us was custom-coded smart contracts for a custom metaverse on the blockchain. Designs can be created on any clothing 3D software, like CLO 3D – which has been around for 8 years,?but what makes us ‘first’ is the metaverse compatibility which is not possible to achieve in India due to hardware and other technical constraints.