Compared to some other industries, fashion seems to be fitting comfortably into the new digital age we’re living in. This time last year, for instance, Metaverse held a ‘Fashion Week’ which featured the biggest brands in fashion building virtual spaces in Decentraland to show off their stock.
Still being a fairly new concept, we decided to take a look around, and it was clear to see how smoothly the world of fashion had integrated itself with the world of the future. Like a huge, virtual shopping mall, users had the chance to simply wander around and pop into a store that took their interest. The stores themselves were filled with fascinating costumes, music, colours, and sometimes even challenges – there was one exhibition that took place in a basketball stadium, with users having to throw as many balls into the basket to earn a fashion-related prize.
It wasn’t quite there yet, of course. In the same way that the online gaming scene can have Canadian live dealers, we can see a time when the online fashion industry has live salespersons, changing to match the buyer’s language and nationality – or even personal shoppers, who can tell users more about the digital clothes that they’re seeing and why they would make a good purchase. But while we were busy wondering what they could do in the future, we couldn’t help casting our minds back to the past. How did fashion become such a smooth integrator into the online world?
New Broadcasting and Filming Techniques
Admittedly, we weren’t casting our minds back for long, because you can actually pinpoint the fashion industry changed to 2020. During the pandemic, organisers of the New York Fashion Week – which includes top brands like Prada, Anna Sui, Elena Velez, and Saint Laurent – had to think up new broadcasting and filming techniques to reach viewers and exhibit their lineups. They did this by opting for prerecorded, online fashion shows, showing off their clothes virtually rather than in person.
In 2021, Burberry took things a step further. During their fashion show, they became one of the first brands to integrate live streaming into their scheduling, forming a partnership with Twitch to ensure viewers could still have an interactive, immersive experience. In response to questions about this partnership, marketing officer Rod Manley stated that Twitch was ‘the next step in the journey to engage with its community’. It was clear, in this way, that the New York Fashion Week and the Burberry fashion show were not just broadcasting and filming techniques to cope with the ongoing global crisis – they were revolutionary steps into the future that demonstrated how the fashion industry would operate to remain relevant with buyers.
The Impact on Fashion Shows
Fashion shows are likely to remain ‘traditional’ for a few more years yet, but as an industry that’s all about change and innovation, it’s not going to take long before the digital world takes over completely. With platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime proving how viewers want their visual media experience to be predominantly online, it has already become commonplace for fashion shows to be broadcast over the internet, and with VR and AR tech similarly improving, buyer experiences are only going to get better.
When it comes to the Fashion Show in Decentraland, the clothes being sold were mainly costumes for avatars, but pretty soon, it will be the clothes you wear on your own back. Rather than watching Fashion Shows in person, anyone can simply place on a VR headset and be transported, being given the opportunity to see the latest fashion ranges up close, in person, with the opportunity to buy being just a click away. This is undoubtedly the way the modern world is headed, and for fashion gurus, it’s a good thing that the industry is keeping up!
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