A Reality Check on Fashion and the Metaverse | The Business of Fashion

A conversation taken from The BoF Professional Summit: An Inflection Point in Fashion Tech, where BoF's technology correspondent Marc Bain speaks with three web3 experts - Brian Trunzo, Alice Delahunt, founder and CEO of Syky, and Milton Pedraza, the founder and CEO of consulting firm the Luxury Institute - to debate the future of web3 and fashion.
Background:
Over the last couple of years, the fashion industry couldn’t stop talking about the potential of NFTs, the metaverse, known in tech industry speak as web3. Now, the fervour around web3 has cooled and the speculators are long gone. But for those committed to the web3 space, the work continues, even as the discussion has shifted.
“People are pulling back, but people are investing,” said Brian Trunzo, metaverse lead at Polygon Labs. “If folks are still at the education stage, doing research either internally or through agencies, they may have cut budgets and pulled back a little bit, whereas folks who have beefed up and built out teams to execute against their web3 strategy, who have had that requisite education, they're doubling down.”
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[@adorkable7196]

I find it weird that we are purposely avoiding talking about the technology when, I'd argue that's actually the part that should be discussed the most. Both Alice and Brian focuses a lot of the idea of a decentralized systems yet all their examples are centralized. Using Fortnite and Roblox as examples without mentioning that the reason they work is that their use case is something other than ownership (gaming), feels disingenuous. If there is no current technology where these NFT goods can exist unless inside of investors/consumers wallets ( which no one outside the NFT space would care about), if cross platforming methodologies can't be applied to these goods, these keeps them centralized and I have to wonder what are consumers being sold? Why is web3 needed, in order to apply any of the things mentioned such as consumer rewards? (which luxury brands already have in place) What's the point of the NFTs inclusion when the "decentralized" aspect, cannot infact be decentralized? Even more so when a lot of NFTs are very currency specific.
Identity is not a strong enough factor to lead people to buy (which has also not been the selling point within NFT spaces but rather financial investment). Instagram was a perfect example of this, when integrated they didn't add any value or identity factor to it. People bought the Fortnite and Roblox NFTs to enhance their brand experience and possibly make money ( that's what the secondary gaming item market you are basing NFTs and digital fashion on, was born from) making this inherently centralized, sure the item gets to more or less exist outside of Fortnite, but unless you play Fortnite or is linked to an already strong brand, as Brian quickly brushed over, the value of the NFT plumets which I would argue stops from making it decentralized.
If we are going to name the talk a "Reality Check on Fashion and the Metaverse", I think it's fair for both consumers and brands ( mid to small brands especially) to have a talk that can be critical and actually questions what is being done, how effective it is and whether this is archivable and valuable, and to whom.

[@icaprone1]

you are right but I believe all three are simply presenting poorly and we are left with talking heads stuck with an old script. of course they are well experienced in the potential of Web2 however they forgot to bring ideas to challenge us with (I believe the bald guy was the only one to ask an important question) and the whole event just gets a little lazy right when it could get interesting

[@IdaelDiaz]

Blender is being used since 1994

[@colourberry]

Its crap like this that damages the blockchain. And how does the host of a fashion panel have no sense of fashion...

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