Will you spend $3 for a Ralph Lauren shirt? Will your avatar mimic your real lifestyle? These questions may seem like they’re for future pondering, but they are actually loaded for now. Ralph Lauren debuted his first digital fashion line this year on the platform Roblox. The cost to dress your avatar in a polo ranges from $1.25 – $3.00.

This is not Ralph Lauren’s first time debuting in cyberspace. In August of 2020, the brand offered its digital clothes to Bitmoji avatars on Snapchat. Some other labels dabbling in cyberspace include Vans, Nike, Louis Vuitton, and Burberry, and these brand-name items are reaching premium prices; a limited edition virtual handbag from Gucci Garden that sold for around $5 on Roblox resold in May for thousands of dollars just weeks later.

For some, the idea of dressing an avatar seems far-fetched or even ridiculous, but for those who envision metaverse as an alternate reality, the digital fashion industry may cash in; we are only at the surface of what the metaverse can be.

“Roblox reported 47.3 million daily active users in the third quarter. Players often change the appearance of their avatars, with 1 in 5 doing so daily…I can imagine a day where players try on items in Roblox, then click on a button to get them delivered in the real world,” said Chistina Wootton, Roblox’s Vice President of Global Brand Partnerships, in an interview (Bloomberg – Are you a robot?, n.d.). 

The metaverse is in its infancy and may have the potential to be larger than any of us can imagine. Presently, most people think of the metaverse in terms of simply Fortnite or Roblox, but it might grow into something none of us can truly comprehend at this time. “Saying that Fortnite is ‘the metaverse’ would be a bit like saying Google is ‘the internet.’ Even if you could, theoretically, spend large chunks of time in Fortnite, socializing, buying things, learning, and playing games, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it encompasses the entire scope of the metaverse” (Ravenscraft, 2021).

Even if the metaverse never takes off beyond a few simple platforms where people play and invent games or adopt virtual pets, why shouldn’t your avatar feel their best? What better way to do that than giving your alternate reality self a real sense of style? If you can buy a head-to-toe outfit for around $4 that puts a smile on your real face, I say go for it. “In the real world, you can buy a shirt from the mall and then wear it to a movie theater. Right now, most platforms have virtual identities, avatars, and inventories that are tied to just one platform, but a metaverse might allow you to create a persona that you can take everywhere as easily as you can copy your profile picture from one social network to another” (Ravenscraft, 2021).

You never know who you will run into online—what will you wear in the metaverse?