Fashion’s New World, which reflects cultural changes and talent shifts, has been the focus of several editions of Vogue over the past month. This concept is now implemented in a virtual environment that premiered everywhere today, including more virtual apparel and computerized artwork.
As part of their nomination process, editorial teams from worldwide Vogue editions, such as India, Australia, Mexico, Latin America, Japan, and China, nominated The Vogue Meta-Ocean, a multimedia event involving 24 artists. A fabled undersea world lies beneath the water’s surface after the above-water expedition. The gallery will continue to be updated with new artwork and artists throughout the year, with many inspired by the September issues of Vogue and including digital fashion as well. Condé Nast owns both Vogue and Vogue Business.
Vogue’s worldwide editorial director Anna Wintour finds the new thinking digitally and virtual fashion fascinating. “Fashion is about creative freedom and bending social conventions,” she said. “Whether or not you’re already dressing in a metaverse, the new thinking digitally and virtually is fascinating.” “Designers who work in this manner will only become more well-known and prominent, and I cannot wait to see what they create next,” she added.
The exhibition featured Versace, Bottega Veneta, and Valentino statues created by France’s Samy LaCrapule and India’s Anushka Tendolkar, inspired by Chinese philosopher Momo Chen and Italian Renaissance canons. In his work, Chinese philosophers describe the five elements (which were originally published in Vogue China’s January issue).
A cover star at Vogue+, a subsidiary newspaper that invites cover stars to design special bi-monthly editions of the magazine, designed the Infni+ avatar for Vogue Meta-Ocean, a sequel to the June issue. With the Unreal Engine from Epic Games, Cattin Tsai created Infni+ (pronounced Infinity). According to Margaret Zhang, editor-in-chief of Vogue China, Infni+ was envisioned as the “home” of the Meta-Ocean, allowing the notion to transcend the page. Also participating in constructing Infni+’s backstory were Chinese writers, artists, poets, and avatars.
Since February 2021, Zhang has held this position at Vogue China, which launched an “open call” for proposals on how to populate the underwater realm with international artwork.
As water is one of the most fundamental concepts in our society, we chose the ocean to set her origin story.
As part of a study on how fashion appears in metaverse locations and “how it impacts the way we approach shoots,” Zhang states that there is a significant amount of work referencing metaverse fashion.
Aside from the fictional character Infni+, Tsai contributed pieces influenced by marine life to the June magazine issue as guest editor. According to Tsai, the virtual ocean environment also helps raise awareness of endangered marine species for ocean conservation by creating a “parallel universe” that provides “a distinct understanding of the organisms themselves.”
The Meta-Ocean plans to introduce new writers and works in the future and sell digital collectibles (when authorized by law), including NFTs, to raise funds for ocean awareness and literacy projects in partnership with the luxurious NFT platform TRLab.
As part of this project, magazine publishers can select distinctive artworks and apparel for the new metaverse and Web3 domains, which many traditionalists may view with confusion. Creating a combination of the surreal and ordinary is one way digital artists achieve success.
Australian artist Justin Ridler pays homage to Louis Vuitton, Windows, and Mugler by blending photography with CGI (computer-generated imagery).
According to Ridler, his wife, Sarah, a fashion designer, collaborated on the project with him to create the physically impossible. “In order to do our job properly, it is imperative that we refrain from doing so and instead base our work on something that is at least relatable to humans.”
According to Zhang, there has been an exceptional rate of change in the past few years.
Despite its anticipated importance and hostility to history and tradition, the next phase of the internet is still being interpreted by the fashion industry and magazines. This phase of the internet is expected to be at least as significant as the rise of e-commerce and social media. A region such as Asia may provide optimal conditions to expand these frontiers. According to Zhang, “digital and virtual art has become a part of the Chinese visual language, not just among artists, but also among fashion designers.”
According to Zhang, despite their age, Vogue China readers are highly tech-literate, which allows them to navigate virtual worlds on mobile devices more easily. She claims that even food delivery applications may provide a gamified virtual experience. Video games are becoming increasingly popular on mobile devices.
China alone is estimated to have 488 million gamers, according to the gaming website Geeiq. In the Asia-Pacific region, 1.6 billion gamers are believed to live, and WARC estimates that there are 3 billion gamers worldwide. Several partnerships with the South Korean game Zepeto, similar to Roblox, have been with several partnerships, including Gucci, Puma, Marine Serre, and Ralph Lauren. This has pushed numerous luxury businesses to develop virtual assets and experiences. With its September cover, Vogue Singapore shared a virtual world at Spatial.io and other metaverse and Web3 efforts, including Balmain’s first-ever NFT.
In a recent fashion show produced by Vogue China and Alibaba, super mascots from luxury brands walked virtual runways in augmented reality fashion shows. Geeiq reports that Burberry offered 18 virtual clothes to its avatars in August in partnership with Douyin, the Chinese equivalent of TikTok. The hashtag of the campaign gained 15 million views on Weibo.
As part of an interactive experience created in collaboration with Tencent’s Super QQ Show earlier this year, avatars and virtual residences were provided with virtual items. In contrast to his home country Australia, “which is very conservative on that front,” according to Ridler, the Vogue China group has a deeper understanding of the relationship between technology, and Ridler observes that the Vogue China luxury.
He also notes that most commissions over the past three years have resulted from contacts with China and the U.S. According to him, “This is a natural extension of what we generate on set for fashion. There seems to be a greater interest in this area among the Vogue China community.”
The cover story for Vogue China in September provoked debate about whether fashion images should incorporate 3D scanning and digital art technologies. With the help of digital artist Slve Sundsb, China’s next generation of supermodels is captured in a 3D-scanned and photographic tableau, which has gained approximately 27 million cumulative reads since its release. According to Condé Nast, Vogue China has three million followers on WeChat.
