Metaverse Fashion Opera is an innovative project that explores the connections between the Metaverse, fashion, and music.
Swati Bhat
Image: #CAPITAL official
The idea for Metaverse Fashion Opera came from a phone call between Gemma, Alastair, and Roy. Alastair will soon write and compose the story for the first metaverse fashion opera, #CAPITAL.
Dragon City, China's first metaverse platform, will collaborate with Fashion Opera to create a new work — and a new stage in the development of this nascent genre.
A group of artists and designers will work together on a piece that excavates the Metaverse's history, telling its story from the dawn of human experience to its realisation in MVFW 23.
This is a tale of dematerialization and symbolism: from the first time someone exchanged a token for an object, or a symbol — a word — for a being in the world — all the way through gold bars and bank notes, or the virtual reality of novels and epic poetry — to bitcoin, avatars and Dragon City itself.
Featuring the designs of Chenpeng, a brand that sees no boundary between beauty and ugliness, the possible and the impossible, and the work of which has been characterized by Anders Sølvsten Thomsen (ANTIDOTE magazine) as both “anti-tradition and deviant,” as well as virtuosic dancers, performers, and sopranos.
This is the story of becoming something else — where everything is always possible.
The concept of Metaverse Fashion Opera comes from a brainstorm in a call between Gemma, Alastair, and Roy. And soon, the story behind the first metaverse fashion opera, #CAPITAL, is created and composed by Alastair.
What is Fashion Opera?
Fashion Opera is a discipline created by Alastair White and Gemma A. Williams under the banner of their company UU Studios. Over the past four years, five works were produced that explored synergies between fashion and music: WEAR, ROBE, WOAD, RUNE, and Hareflight. These featured contemporary dance, immersive theatre, experimental music, and a range of collections: from a specially-made capsule by London-based brand KA WA KEY to a re-presentation of archive work by Issey Miyake.Fashion Opera has been described as “a whole exciting new genre of art” (BBC Radio 3), “a groundbreaking new genre” (Classical Music Magazine), and “a perfect combination of show and costume” (Vogue Italia). The operas have been shortlisted for a number of Scottish art awards, and recently received New Zealand’s Tait Memorial Trust prize. Three have gone on to be recorded and released as albums on the Métier label to further critical acclaim.The methodology behind these, proposed by Alastair White in a recent PhD as well as numerous academic articles and lectures, concerns a reimagining of the relationship between garment and music. This is based on ideas drawn from contemporary mathematics and quantum mechanics: that is, the existence of multiple infinities and universes allows for the existence of an artform in which each constituent — fashion, music, drama, dance — is both central and absolute. The individual works often explore themes of groundbreaking technology and or recent cosmological discovery: including virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and the multiverse.
