Metaverse vs Tiktok: The Real Fashion Fight Begins Here

Metaverse is a digital space represented by digital representations of people, places, and things

A Metaverse is a digital space represented by digital representations of people, places, and things. In other words, it's a "digital world" with real people represented by digital objects. In many ways, Microsoft Teams or Zoom is already a form of a Metaverse. You are "there" in the room, but you may be a static image, an avatar, or a live video. So Metaverse is a broader context for "bringing people together." It can be used for many things: meetings, visiting a factory floor, onboarding, or training. In fact, almost every HR and talent-related program can be redesigned for the Metaverse. And if you wear 3D glasses, the Metaverse is fully immersive.

ByteDance, the owner of short-video sharing app TikTok and its Chinese sibling Douyin, has launched a social app in China that allows users to interact in a virtual community through avatars, as interest around the metaverse continues to grow.

Fundamentally for fashion, Metaverse and TikTok are competing for the attention span of younger users, while they also compete for fashion as advertisers. Already, TikTokers have joined fashion guest lists along with now-traditional bloggers and Instagram-first influencers. But when it comes to metaverse things are still very new for everyone but still, luxury brands like Gucci and Ralph Lauren are signing on to metaverse experiences on platforms such as Roblox, Zepeto, and Decentraland, and Morgan Stanley predicts social gaming could add up to US$20 billion to luxury's total addressable market.

The metaverse is the next evolution of the internet. If the first stage was to provide us with information, the second stage was to allow us to connect across borders. The third stage of the internet – the metaverse – is about immersing ourselves in the virtual world through our avatars.

Standard interest in NFTs has just sped up this interest in gaming and virtual universes. More brands are searching out coordinated efforts with esports groups, game designers, and gaming control centers, or launching exclusive collections and pieces in certain games. It's an intriguing new development for an industry stressed over income misfortune from declining pandemic deals. Here is a chance for well-funded brands — many with the financial means to weather Covid-19 uncertainty while smaller stores shuttered — to bring in sales and customers without any physical products at all.

Luxury fashion has bragged a particularly innovative digital approach. An exceptional age of architects and creative chefs have generously tried different things with arising innovations as of late, in manners inventive and reasonable, yet additionally infrequently sketchy. Review Balmain's "virtual armed force" of supermodels, comprising totally of three advanced, multiracial ladies, based on an incredibly limited norm of magnificence. Or on the other hand Calvin Klein's unfortunate effort to copy eccentric allyship by having Bella Hadid, a genuine hetero lady, kiss Lil Miquela, a virtual force to be reckoned with who is apparently sexually unbiased for the end goal of advertising, while #InTheirCalvins.

But virtual worlds and virtual commerce also open the doors for virtual advertisement, informed by behavioral data that far surpasses what Instagram or Facebook could measure via tapping and scrolling. In its pivot to the metaverse, Meta is heavily investing in augmented reality, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and the necessary talent to build hardware and software to do this, a cost further eating into profits.

Utilizing the metaverse meant that brands could offer their customers new ways to experience clothing only. From getting an in-depth 360-degree view of the clothing to being able to 'virtually' try on clothing. These fashion brands are utilizing the technology originally made popular by beauty brands before the pandemic who used AI technology to allow customers to try on makeup through their smartphone cameras.

The metaverse offers the fashion industry the ability to allow their customers to try on and see the garments they're interested in before hitting 'add to cart'. Ralph Lauren – one of the world's most recognizable fashion brands – recently opened a virtual store on Roblox. The platform has almost 50 million active users, allowing virtually anyone to access virtual Ralph Lauren garments within just a few clicks.

In conclusion, it is hard to say who will win the fashion game because both the platforms are doing great, where curiosity to try metaverse is high, and on the other hand, Tiktok is already a trendsetter.