Metaverse is hosting its first virtual fashion show

Online metaverse and social media site IMVU grew 44% in the pandemic; it currently attracts 7 million active users per month, most of whom identify as male or female and between the ages of 18 and 24. If you’re not one of those millions, here’s the basic information: In IMVU, users create and wear personal avatars. clothes designed by other members — creators, in the language of the site — purchased with credit paid for in real money. The goal of IMVU is to almost connect with friends and make new ones, but shopping is not the attraction of the site. IMVU’s online store contains 50 million items made by more than 200,000 creators. More than 27 billion transactions are exchanged every month for fourteen billion credits or $ 14 billion. “I buy, so I am,” as Barbara Kruger put it in her famous 1990 artwork, it takes on a new echo in this digital world.

“Fashion is the epicenter of why people create avatars and connect with others with IMVU,” says Lindsay Anne Aamodt, the site’s chief marketing officer. “Part of that is because wearing an avatar in the digital space gives people access to anything they want to look like, and it’s hard to do that in the real world.” On the night of the 2019 Met Gala, for example, there were virtual versions of celebrity red carpets at IMVU before the cameras stopped flashing. “Whenever there is something important in pop culture or there is a trend in fashion, it happens immediately at IMVU,” Aamodt affirmed. Users hold their own fashion shows, set up virtual modeling agencies, and organize awards ceremonies. When the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic began to bring musicians to digital platforms like IMVU, in the absence of worldwide production, videos could be created, Aamodt had a brain.

Now she is leading the first virtual fashion show at IMVU, which brings together labels from around the world. Hill Road, Gypsy Sports, Mowalola, Freak City, Bruce Glen, My Mum Made It and Mimi Wade with expert creators who know about the 3D networking and weaving process that enlivens IMVU’s clothing and accessories. The show will air on May 27, after which IMVU users will be able to purchase and dress their avatars in the guise of designers who have seen them on the virtual runway.

See now unlike the ingredients you buy Animal crossing the fashion show took place in May last year, when closing orders made live events impossible. It’s also IMVU’s 3D avatar level. “This goes beyond putting a logo on a digital t-shirt or‘ pixel pants ’,” says Aamodt. “I really want two things to happen: I want to see people look at fashion with a different lens — not just wear a dress on their avatar, but I want to look at the offerings of Collina Strada or Mowalola and be much more creative about that statement. I also want to communicate with real-world brands that the metaverse is a place for crowded audiences where there is a real opportunity to integrate the brand, spread the brand and express the brand. ”He continues,“ It’s one thing to see an ad over and over again. It’s one thing to do Instagram Live. But it’s another thing to acquire a brand before you make real-world investments, and that kind of accessibility will only increase the reach of those brands. “

IMVU lineup designers aren’t necessarily the heads of technology, but they are all one way or another to break the rules. As a sustainability advocate, Collina Strada’s Hillary Taymour was a game to try her hand at virtual clothing. “There’s a way to create more than just a product model, a more representative educational model,” Taymour said. Modan With the help of Gucci he produced a video game before the fall of the 21st, where the mission was to fight climate change. At IMVU, Taymour’s avatars will carry virtual versions of the clothes the IRL sells, as well as more fantastic outfits. “I’m not so attached to digital media — at my stop, I want to lie on a rock next to a stream — but I think it’s a way to create things,” he says. “I’m such a small brand. I don’t have a team to do everything I want to do.” Nigerian-born London-based Mowalola Ogunlesi, who runs a line of the same name and is working with Kanye West in her new business Yanyez Gap, emphasizes the accessibility of IMVU. “I liked the idea of ​​doing it digitally because I never did it,” he says. “It was an idea that could be anything, and that people could have it right away, instead of waiting for production in stores.”

Gypsy Sport is responsible for representing Rio Uribe in the real world and virtual. His last IRL track was a celebration of his Chicano heritage; In IMVU, his avatars will be shaped by his muses and the other people he has worked with, only with strange blue and green skin and other world features. “It starts in New York, and they transport the gypsy universe, which is a metaphysical world where all bodies are valid and fashion is almost unnecessary because we’d like to be naked, but a nice way to express yourself,” she says. “I was inspired by the idea that we get to introduce gypsy sport to people, which is why we repeat the looks of last season but give them a Met Gala tour that is bigger than life,” he added. “Maybe one of those pieces can be shown at the Met one day.”