Because of Coronavirus digitally advanced fashion presentations have become the norm during the last year. So the announcement that platform and social app IMVU was going to host a group fashion show in May didn't come as a surprise.
The event was streamed live on May 27-28 on IMVU's YouTube Channel and Instagram Live and featured seven emerging fashion designers, Collina Strada, Mowalola, Gypsy Sport, Freak City, Mimi Wade, My Mum Made It and BruceGlen in collaboration with creators from the IMVU community.
In an official press release IMVU Senior Director of Marketing, Lindsay Anne Aamodt, stated, "Being able to host a fashion show on our platform unlocks access to experiences for a wider group of diverse communities. We want to show everyone that it's easy for anyone to create unique fashions and market them on IMVU to make real money with the creator tools we provide."
The show - introduced by fashion icon Princess Gollum - was divided in two parts, Day One and Day Two, with designers presenting digital rooms built on the IMVU platform to debut pre-collections and other digital items that could never be created in real life.
For Day One Collina Strada developed a psychedelic environment populated by hybrid animal-flower-human creatures (designs developed by EsmeShaw, SecondHarvest, Pharmacist, MissC) that seemed to be a sort of evolution of the video game "Collinaland", created last November in occasion of the brand's pre-Fall 2021 collection.
BruceGlen opted for a runway show that took place in different settings and environments, from the tropical to the urban, and that featured multi-coloured designs and accessories (in this case there were three developer - Vues, iDezzBanks, Gaset); My Mum Made It's avatars (designed with YALLA) were a bit too reminiscent of Kim Kardashian while Mowalola's room and clothes (created in collaboration with Yannomi, Exif, and LaLov (Marta LaLov)) were inspired by clubs and raves.
For Day Two Freak City (with models by Roy, Kotimori, Gotlane) went for an environment suspended between a fashion show and a urban video game, with characters in clothes inspired by graffiti and popular culture - honourable mentions in this collection go to the dress with a digital print of US Vice-President Kamala Harris and to the "Pfreak" shirt based on the logo of pharmaceutical company Pfizer, more famous for its vaccine against Covid-19.
Mimi Wade combined a fairy tale in an enchanted wood environment with horror stories (the developers in this case were Lizzie Klein, Gad (Nathan Stewart) and Brats (Nicole)), while Gypsy Sport was probably the brand that featured the most diverse avatars (including blue and green skin aliens...) with the most fluid fashion poses (the creators in this case were Naitve, Ogi, GothicGarden and SeanOwenBlue). Even though the show took place in this metaphysical world, Gypsy Sport managed to connect it with reality via a design dedicated to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Now, if you'd had to judge the results of this experience from the point of view of a traditional fashion reviewer, you would easily dismiss the designs as unwearable and utterly unconvincing, a mind-boggling mess of bright, bold and colourful psychedelic atmospheres.
Yet in this case traditional reviews do not apply: the fashion items are indeed dedicated to the IMVU users - a community that has grown to include 7 million active users a month (the platform registered an increase in users because of the pandemic), most of them female or female-identifying, and quite young - aged from 18 to 24 - who like customising their avatars.
All of the designers' digital creations became indeed available for purchase by IMVU players starting May 28 and it is this buy-now component dedicated to users of the virtual reality platform that sets a difference between this show and other digital shows seen in the last year.
Besides, additional exclusive items seen in these collections are auctioned as NFTs on IMVU's OpenSea marketplace. After purchase, the NFTs can then be modeled in the IMVU metaverse (it is worth remembering here that, as Collina Strada is a brand committed to sustainability and, worried about the energy consumption of NFTs, its NFTs will be sold on Hicetnunc, a less energy-intensive network).
So where is the strength of such an experiment? These metaverse shows may be confusing, chaotic and utterly incoherent for those who are not used to these platforms, but, while reflecting the complex times we're living in (and the need to escape to alternative worlds...), they also remind us that the future of fashion is not just physical but digital as well.
The collections presented on IMVU are indeed not profitable from a physical point of view, but they represent new possibilities of selling fashion pieces to a very different type of consumer.
IMVU users create personal avatars and dress them in clothes designed by creators, paying them with credits bought with real money. Shopping is indeed part of the IMVU experience, with the virtual store featuring 50 million items and registering millions of transactions a month (IMVU employs the cryptocurrency VCOIN that, built on blockchain technology, can be purchased, earned, and exchanged within the IMVU platform - it can be transferred off the platform into a user's Uphold account where it can then be transferred to cash).
It becomes therefore very clear that there is potential to make some profits in the metaverse and the time may have come even for those real-life brands that never considered opting for digital designs to sit down and think more about the metaverse as another possibility for brand expansion. These spaces are indeed not perceived as threats that may lead to brand dilution as the designs created here in most cases can not exist in real life.
Last by not least, there is a very important question to ask: how will fashion exhibitions change in future after this past year of digital runway shows and presentations? All this focus on digital fashion may indeed prompt museums organising fashion exhibitions to start integrating also sections dedicated to digital designs in their events and this may introduce in museum spaces not just virtual garments and accessories, but also the technology that goes behind their creaction (in the case of IMVU, think about the IMVU Studio Beta Creator tool that allows users to create innovative patterns, light and shadow effects and matte or shiny surfaces).
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