Fashion Startups Enter UAE Metaverse Sector

Metaverse is giving young designers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to break into the global fashion industry.

Recently, digital fashion startups have been making inroads into the virtual fashion street, exploring new age luxury collections of wearables. New opportunities are drawing  in investors,  as the Silicon Valley-based venture capital a16z is launching a billion dollar fund to support blockchain ventures, while Nike is lapping up virtual collectibles venture RTFKT.

According to Deloitte, the metaverse fashion industry is set to achieve $55 billion globally by 2030.

For young designers, this [metaverse] is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to break into the global fashion industry without having to secure millions in funding, building supply and production chains,

Indre Viltrakyte, founder and CEO of The Rebels, a metaverse fashion startup, told Arabian Business.

Creating the first fashion collection usually costs a huge sum of money, which young designers usually lack.

In web3, young designers don’t need to wait for all the intermediaries – buyers, press, manufacturers. They can show their vision digitally and go straight to their audience which will support the creator and fund their work,

Viltrakyte said.

Digital fashion, however, will not substitute the real, physical one. Some of the first collections of the brand will still be physical. However, the next collaboration drop, Viltrakyte promises, will be purely digital – with an NFT that can be tried on via an AR filter.