If you haven’t heard, Facebook has just gone through an enormous rebrand over the weekend, and it will have an effect on the fashion world more than you’d think. The multi-billion dollar company has been revamped under the name Meta, which will be the umbrella company that still owns social media platforms, Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram.
Mark Zuckerberg announced his mission for the new company during his Connect presentation on Thursday, indicating the focus of the rebrand is the Metaverse: a futuristic (and possibly borderline dystopian) project combining virtual and augmented reality into a space where the digital and real worlds collide. The Metaverse is highly concentrated on creating shared virtual experiences, from office life, entertainment and commerce. The virtual plane will allow users to interact with others through VR glasses to create their own worlds, design homes, and experience much more than imaginable.
Zuckerberg showed us how we could dress our virtual avatars to match our style and features during the presentation. We saw him swipe through a digital closet, choosing what to dress his avatar in before he met up with others in a virtual space. This opens up endless creative possibilities when it comes to digital wearables.
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard of digital fashion; we’ve seen the rise of NFTs, augmented reality makeup, and digital fashion shows over the last year. But the Metaverse could change the landscape entirely by introducing digital and real-world fashion opportunities. Creators will be able to display their creations to an enormous market, eliminating the distance, and opening up the accessibility. In addition, brands could digitally upload items and have avatars wear them, creating a new digital market for virtual clothes.
However, some limitations coincide with ideas as enormous as this. For instance, the concept of the Metaverse is still far from being a reality. Another issue is the ability to transfer the real-life effects of clothing into a digital format. Again this ties into the digital ownership that is attached to NFTs. For example, would we all own our own virtual wardrobes tailored to different events and experiences?
The questions are endless, but it is obvious we are entering a new era of digital experiences.
