Welcome to the metaverse’s fashion week, What to expect?

Metaverse platform Decentraland is hosting its first Metaverse Fashion Week starting 24 March, with dozens of global brands and thousands of visitors able to virtually experience fashion shows, attend live music sessions at branded after parties, and buy and wear digital clothing directly from catwalk avatars. During the four-day virtual event, there will be showrooms, stores, talks, and events.

Hugo (part of the newly rebranded Hugo Boss) recently signed an agreement with MVFW partner Boson Protocol to allow people to purchase physical Hugo goods within the metaverse, including Metaverse Fashion Week, making it one of the first brands to announce their participation.

Decentraland’s MVFW provides some important insights into how the fashion metaverse is unfolding. This inaugural event, designed to be the virtual home of global fashion weeks, provides brands with a low-risk environment to test the technology of a 3D virtual world platform. Decentraland is notable for being one of the few well-known open metaverse platforms.

Virtual avatars will walk the runways, with some of them being shoppable and wearable, implying that people will be able to wear digital items in Decentraland, and some collections will have a physical twin. For example, a visitor to MVFW may purchase a digital item via an NFT and instantly wear it on their avatar; they may choose to sell that item or keep it and redeem the NFT to receive the brand’s physical complement.

Anyone can attend MVFW, but in order to purchase a wearable, they must have an Ethereum wallet. Most events will be open to the public, but some brands have inquired about VIP access or front-row seats, which could be used to provide special access or free items to current NFT owners. Beyond the ability to purchase, the look and feel are important — what makes fashion shows special in person are the set design, soundtrack, and overall atmosphere. UNXD, a luxury NFT marketplace that collaborated with Dolce & Gabbana on its NFTs, is assisting in the programming curation.

“We want to help the onboarding process and push creativity and show everyone what is possible,” says Sam Hamilton, creative director at Decentraland

The event hopes to serve as a more official virtual fashion week destination, as opposed to the types of one-off virtual that has served as an alternative or supplement to a real-life event in the last two years.