Renan Pacson of Meta Filipina

For Filipino fashion designer and creator of Meta Filipina Renan Pacson, his first step into the metaverse was taken in the recent Panasonic Manila Fashion Festival (PMFF) show where he presented Meta Filipina—a fully-digital fashion collection, also a first in the Philippines.

Pacson describes the metaverse as a whole new universe, so by just traversing it is already a big challenge. Learning what it actually is, what it could mean to him, his craft, and his business, as well as learning the software that helps him design, are still challenges to be conquered when it comes to the subject of fashion in the metaverse.

“The PMFF show was a soft introduction to a bigger project that I am working on,” Pacson reveals. “Meta Filipina will go beyond the runway of PMFF and will not just be fashion-centric but also a representation of Philippine culture in the metaverse.”

So, why did he choose to engage in the metaverse? It was synchronicity.

Pacson was introduced by his partner to the idea of the metaverse as he was writing something about it late last year. He was starting to read and learn more about it when an offer from the organizers of PMFF came, and they wanted him to partner with Z-Emotion, a software company from Korea, to learn the software and do a fully-digital collection.

“As for the reception [of the metaverse], I guess based on this recent panel review [on PMFF], everyone is excited and so eager to find out what it actually is, and what they could do with it, and how they could incorporate it into their lives,” he explains.

Nobody could really tell how the international and local fashion industry will respond to the expansion of the metaverse, but Pacson thinks that brands, big or small, could definitely benefit from the aspect of NFTs as it can be a sort of authenticity certificate of a brand’s product or an independent designer’s work.

Some brands are merging augmented reality (AR) with their shopping experience, where an individual can just scan one’s self and try on clothes to see if it suits him or her without having to really put the clothes on. Fittings can be done at home just by scanning a QR code and sending a shopping list once a consumer has made a choice.

“As for VR, developers and big tech companies are separately building their own metaverses,” Pacson says. “It’s hard to tell exactly what the future could bring, but it is definitely exciting. I am enjoying the merging of two worlds— the gaming and the fashion world—into the metaverse. The possibilities are endless and so are the whats and the whys.”