What Dolce & Gabbana’s US$6 million sale of NFTs says about virtual fashion’s impact, as customers pay to dress their online avatars in luxury costumes

Emerging virtual fashion stores are tapping into a growing market for digitally generated outfits that stores Photoshop onto a customer’s photos or videos

Luxury brands are getting involved, from Louis Vuitton’s ‘skins’ for video game League of Legends to Balmain’s virtual looks sold on a NFT marketplace

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Published: 6:15pm, 10 Oct 2021Updated: 11:38am, 17 Nov 2021

The online metaverse is coming and if we’re going to be spending more time in virtual worlds, there’s one crucial question: what are you going to wear?

“When I first started talking about this, my friends were like, ‘What are you talking about?’” said 27-year-old Daniella Loftus. “But my 14-year-old cousins understood it immediately.”

For many, the idea of buying clothes that don’t exist is a conceptual leap too far.

But emerging digital fashion stores are tapping into a growing market – not actual clothes but digitally generated outfits that stores simply Photoshop onto a customer’s photos or videos to be posted onto Instagram and elsewhere.

Virtual clothing is available on digital fashion store DressX.

Soon, they are likely to become a way to dress your avatar when interacting in online games and meeting places, all potentially while reclining in sweatpants in your own home.