Myami puts luxury fashion in the metaverse – and on the runway
Australian luxury digital fashion brand Myami presented what is believed to be a world-first fashion show in the metaverse.
When Duckie Thot took to the catwalk on Saturday in a white silk faille “flowerbomb” dress, it was like she broke out of a computer screen and emerged into the real world.
The dress was the first physical iteration of a design by Australian luxury digital fashion brand Myami.
The night before the catwalk show, also as part of the Melbourne Fashion Festival, Myami presented what is believed to be a world-first fashion show in the metaverse – a digital universe where avatars were dressed in the brand’s first full collection, called Abiogenesis: the Origin of New Life.
There, Duckie’s avatar wore the dress in its digital form.
That dress – and the other 79 garments in the collection – will soon be available as NFTs, or non-fungible tokens.
For Myami founder Brad Morris – who heads up a global team of programmers and designers – these were two watershed moments for the brand that had so far released just two designs as NFTs.
NFTs and the metaverse have become buzzwords in the worlds of gaming, art, sport, and music.
In the fashion world, luxury brands including Burberry, Balenciaga, Karl Lagerfeld and Roskanda have all dipped their toes into NFTs or the metaverse, some offering skins for gaming avatars, others simply selling cartoon-like collectibles.
Myami differs in that it is the first luxury fashion brand to be digital first.
“We’ve done a lot of research on who is the digital luxury fashion brand globally, and there isn’t one. That’s our USP,” Morris tells The Australian.
For those that fail to see the point of clothing that exists only for an avatar in the metaverse, Morris adds that there are imminent real-world applications for the digital garments.
“Myami is luxury fashion for every place your digital identity exists,” he explained.
“You think, OK I do social media, I do Zooms and Google hangouts. You can use Myami for that.
“I don’t think it is (just for) people interested in deep tech.
“It’s about people interested in luxury fashion and they just don’t know yet about digital luxury fashion.
“It has exactly the same qualities – the prestige that comes from luxury, the ability to show those things off or be seen in certain pieces.”
“Fabrics” used in the first collection include hyper-real digital iterations of cracked earth, lava, ice, water and “hibiscus fur”, a pixel version of the flower’s pollen – photographed, magnified, manipulated and rendered into a textile.
Morris imagines that in future, the purchase of a garment might include seasonal updates of colour or textile “like an iOS update” baked into the original NFT contract.
Like any luxury fashion brand, Myami offers “entry level” accessories including hats and belts, through to key pieces such as coats and dresses.
The prices are in line with luxury brands and, as with the world of NFT collectibles, priced according to rarity.
Thus, an accessory available in a run of 100 NFTs might sell for $500, while a one-off item could sell in the tens of thousands of dollars.
“That’s the nature of this world, it’s all about scarcity,” said Morris.
To round out the digital experience, Thot’s turn on the catwalk was captured on video, melded with video of her as an avatar, the dress turning from white to the bright orange hibiscus textile, and turned into an NFT, which will go to auction on Friday, with proceeds going to assist the Red Cross Appeal for Ukraine and Dobro.ua, a fundraising platform for Ukrainian relief.