One of the biggest challenges facing the burgeoning digital fashion space—loosely defined as designer and programmer working to dress the virtual avatars that will come to populate the newborns metaverse— has balanced the priorities of fashion veterans and Web3 pioneers.
Some of the most popular metaverse platforms, such as Decentralized AND The sandboxhave gained considerable traction in Web3 circles due to the fact that they operate in a “without permission” structure: digital assets—like a virtual garment, for example—can flow freely in and out of them.
Those same platforms, however, tend to be built in extremely simplistic 3D styles.
Sandbox, for example, uses a signature “voxelized” aesthetic (think pixels, but with cubes). Some industry experts feel that such blocky and sketchy ecosystems are ill-suited to serve as testing grounds for the future of digital fashion.
“The reality is that many brands don’t really see The Sandbox – or any crowded environment – as conducive to fashion,” said Richard Hobbs, CEO of digital fashion platform BNV. decode in a video interview.
Hobbs believes that BNV—which, in addition to creating digital fashion pieces, also serves as a conduit between traditional fashion brands and design tools for the metaverse—may have solved this dilemma. Within the next month, the company plans to release a beta version of its metaverse platform, BNV World, which will be specifically tailored to showcase complex and intricate pieces of digital fashion to citizens of the metaverse.
BNV World will be built with Unreal engine, the real graphics software tool from Fortnite creator Epic Games. Hobbs believes that the flexibility offered by Unreal will be key to attracting the enthusiasm of fashion leaders reserved about the design limitations of the current metaverse.
“Those experiences, those metaverses, that are being built or dreamed of being built using Unreal are where I think you’re going to have the most traction with fashion brands,” Hobbs said. “You can use the power of Unreal to show material physics in a different way. [Before]there was no movement in the materials, they were literally mounted on the avatar, and that was it.”
BNV World will allow visitors to showcase fashion pieces from a host of designers in ultra-realistic 3D and feature a platform-exclusive marketplace for BNV products. There will also be virtual spaces and stages designed for events and launches of digital fashion collections. Certain areas of the platform will be restricted, offering NFT holders “different levels of accessibility and wearability”.
Hobbs is convinced that creating a virtual space that first and foremost aims to meet the visual demands of digital fashion will allow creators to be “much more creative and experimental with how fashion can look and be interpreted in the metaverse.” .
Luxury fashion brands have begun to experiment with presences in the metaverse, although the fruits of these efforts have yet to really materialize.
In February, Gucci bought an undisclosed amount of virtual land in Sandbox, on which it will build themed spaces and sell digital fashion items. French ultra-luxury fashion house Balmain currently developing a metaverse ecosystem designed to entice its exclusive clientele with tiered, immersive experiences. Balmain has not yet revealed which metaverse platform it plans to build on.
