The Metaverse, Virtual Changing Rooms, and The Future of Apparel Technology

With the convergence of the real and virtual worlds, fashion retail will certainly face an exciting future.

FREMONT, CA: The pandemic has made online buying more popular. Yet, it falls short in a few respects. When it comes to fashion, for instance, buyers have traditionally valued the ability to touch, feel, and try on garments—an experience that internet buying has not yet effectively recreated.

This will likely change with the advent of the metaverse, a word commonly used to refer to the "next level" of the internet. It often refers to immersive, 3D, interconnected virtual environments that are significantly more engaging and experiential than the websites customers now visit.

Since Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg relaunched his company as Meta in late 2021 to focus on the potential estimated to be worth up to $22 trillion, the metaverse concept has been the topic of great buzz.

The metaverse concept originated in gaming and has been adopted by various industries, with retail—and fashion retail—eager to profit from the prospects.

Why do fashion merchants find the metaverse appealing?

There are numerous reasons why the metaverse is so appealing to the fashion retail industry. First, in the metaverse, humans will typically be represented by avatars—3D representations of themselves ranging from cartoonish to photorealistic models that are identical.

This means that customers can place their avatars in "virtual dressing rooms" and virtually try on as many garments from a retailer's inventory as they choose. Using technology developed by Reactive Reality, customers can visualize how they will appear on their bodies. They can observe ourselves wearing the garments from any angle and place our avatars in various situations, including offices, beaches, and nightclubs.

This is an application of mixed Reality (MR), a technology that combines components of Virtual Reality (VR) and augmented Reality (AR) to generate partially real and partially virtual imagery.

Mixed Reality (MR) tackles one of the greatest challenges of online buying, which customers all know is the inability to examine and try on things before making a purchase—get proper size recommendations—sizing is one of the major concerns that needs improving - and have a lot of fun in the process. People have a lot of fun mixing and matching their clothing.

Customers can also provide businesses with vast amounts of data as they try on garments, similar to how traditional internet shops collect data while you browse. Which products are the most popular among individuals with specific body types? How can lighting and surroundings influence purchasing decisions in a virtual environment? What products can be upsold and cross-sold? Fashion merchants can use these priceless pieces of information to make recommendations and increase conversion rates.

A third advantage is an evidence that the metaverse will assist retailers in reducing the enormous expense and waste associated with returns. In 2021, merchants faced return rates of about 17 percent of all merchandise sold at $218 billion. Delivery and logistics incur environmental costs as well. If virtual fitting rooms enable customers to make more informed purchasing decisions, they could significantly reduce waste.

This year marked the debut of the first Metaverse Fashion Week, as the concept has become so popular. Based on the popular Decentraland platform, users could purchase apparel items in the virtual world and have them transported to their real-world addresses. Participating fashion retailers included Tommy Hilfiger, DKNY, and Dolce & Gabbana.

Virtual attire

Due to the increasing popularity of the metaverse and online worlds in general, a virtual clothing industry has emerged.

If, as research suggests, customers spend a growing lot of time as avatars in online, virtual worlds, they will want our avatars to be at least as well-dressed and indicative of our personality and originality as they are in the actual world.

Among others, Nike, Gucci, and Burberry have produced and sold wholly virtual apparel collections. They are sold as NFTs, non-fungible tokens that sit on a blockchain and ensure that the things are unique and can only be used by their purchasers.