Nolcha Shows, an independent fashion design firm, is hosting a virtual-reality fashion event at the World Trade Center for New York Fashion Week. This event will open up the world of design to newcomers who wish to participate.
Those who participate will have the opportunity to experience groundbreaking technology that mixes fashion with the metaverse, virtual avatars, augmented reality, and digital wearables.
This will be a two-day web3 event, and it will be held on the 69th floor of the iconic 3 World Trade Center. Arthur Mandel, co-founder of The Nolcha Shows at New York Fashion Week, said, “The goal is to create a new destination, or highway, connecting web2 or web3 communities where they can work together.” This makes it, unlike any other traditional NFT event.
The fashion show is an invite-only event, and there is a limit to how many people can reside within the venue, but the use of web3 will “allow everyone to experience fashion week – not just a select few,” says Mandel. Augmented reality will allow participants to see how different clothes look on the runway without having to change clothes. This allows for more creativity with fashion styles than traditionally possible.
These runway shows will start at 2 p.m. on September 13th, featuring ready-to-wear web3 native brands, and panel discussions will begin at 12 p.m. on September 15th. These panels will allow for opportunities to share and exchange ideas about the usefulness of web3 in the fashion industry.
Brian Wallace, chief marketing officer for Vatom, says, “It is about educating brands about the difference between NFTs for speculation, collectibles, and virtual spaces where people are walking around – and all the real potential for web3. It’s about creating an absolutely new direct engagement channel with their customers where they can reward and incentivize behavior on an ongoing basis.”
NFTs are viewed traditionally as a show-and-tell technology by many brands, but now we are at a “now what” stage. Wallace said, “You have many peoples’ attention; now, how are you going to increase brand and customer engagement?” The more successful web3 projects are responding to and engaging with their customers.
Jacqueline Blackburn at Scout Ventures said, “We need to align technology that we’re seeing with what people want and provide them with an entry point and access…we just need to get to a point where there is a really easy entry point for people to get involved.”
