The virtual world of Decentraland isn’t just about art galleries and virtual museums; it’s also about fashion and avatars. People have all kinds of ways to express themselves in the metaverse, and the digital fashion industry is one of the rising trends.

Decentraland was the first ever virtual world owned by its users; hence, it is one of the pioneers of the metaverse. The platform runs on the Ethereum blockchain, allowing users to trade, explore, interact with each other, and play games inside the virtual world.

Decentraland has grown and evolved over the last few years, implementing interactive apps, in-world payments, and various other features. 

One of the most interesting things about this particular virtual world is fashion (or wearables). This blog will briefly explain fashion in Decentraland and how the industry is forming.

Decentraland’s History

Decentraland, developed by the Decentraland Foundation, was founded in 2015. In 2017, the team held an Initial Coin Offering (ICO), raising 86,206 ETH (around $26 million at that time) to fund its future operations. 

Before the launch of Decentraland, the team established a DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) to hand over the project management to its users. The team claims to have destroyed the private key that controls Decentraland’s smart contract.

Two types of tokens essentially govern this virtual world: LAND – a non-fungible token (or NFT) that defines the ownership of digital land parcels, and MANA, a cryptocurrency that enables the purchase of LAND and various other virtual goods and services in Decentraland. 

Creating An Avatar In Decentraland

To take part in this virtual world, you need to have a user avatar. To just explore as a guest, you can get an avatar at no cost at all. But if you want to be able to do everything else, then you need to get the real deal, which costs 100 MANA with a small ETH gas fee on top. Only one user avatar per email or digital wallet is allowed.

Your avatar is also an NFT, and creating one is very simple:

• You need to download the MetaMask wallet first.
• Transfer enough MANA and Ethereum into your wallet to purchase an avatar – 100 MANA plus a small Ethereum gas fee.
• Register your avatar on the specialized link.
• Pick a name for your character, and then pay the required fee.
• You can then choose to customize your character’s appearance: skin tone, bodily and facial features, clothes, accessories, etc., or go with a randomly generated avatar.
• Once you’re done creating your avatar, you are free to join Decentraland’s virtual world.

Dressing Your Avatar

Suppose you want to make a virtual character that is totally unique. In that case, you can customize it with Decentraland wearables, such as clothing items, accessories, and body features (sneakers, fashionable tops, bottoms, fancy costumes, tophats, glasses, earrings, cat eyes, you name it).

All of the Decentraland wearables are NFTs and have their own marketplace. This means you can trade them as NFTs on an open market. If you’re purchasing them on the Decentraland marketplace, however, you will need MANA. You can buy wearables on the OpenSea marketplace using MANA or ETH. Prices may vary for the same item, and you may want to shop around a bit to get the best deal. Wearables are occasionally distributed in competitions and giveaways as well. On OpenSea, the price for wearables ranges from around 0.0017 ETH (about $5) for a pair of Polygon Thunder earrings to 1 billion MANA (nearly $769 million) for a Decentraland hat.

Anyone can design and create their own Decentraland wearables and have them minted and sold as NFTs. Your design would first have to be sent to a Curation Committee for approval, and it can then be minted and available for use in the virtual world or for purchase in the open market. Wearables can be minted to create multiple NFTs or representations of it to a limit according to the item’s rarity. The digital items can’t be purchased or sold except as NFTs that have been minted from them, and individual items must be published as part of a collection, not just on their own. This is because a particular collection will have its own smart contract.

Which Wearables Are The Coolest?

Decentraland wearables are divided into six categories by their rarity: 

• Common
• Uncommon
• Rare
• Epic
• Legendary
• Mythic

Furthermore, each of these corresponds with the maximum number of tokenized wearables that can be minted for each design according to the smart contract of each collection, as follows:

• Common: 100,000
• Uncommon: 10,000
• Rare: 5,000
• Epic: 1,000
• Legendary: 100
• Mythic: 10

Each wearable has its mintage number shown beside it when viewed in the marketplace, marking the order in which it was minted – the lower the number, the earlier an item was minted in relation to any others of the same design. For example, if a wearable such as a Coca-Cola T-shirt has a mintage number of 4/10, it means it was the fourth to be minted among a total of 10 Coca-Cola T-shirts. The earlier an item is minted, the higher value users assign to it, generally speaking.

Also, different background colors mark each category in the Decentraland marketplace and the Avatar Editor mode:

• Common: grey
• Uncommon: orange
• Rare: green
• Epic: blue
• Legendary: purple
• Mythic: pink

From the ranking names, you could guess which wearables are the coolest ones to own, and if they have a low mintage number, even more so. Also, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that users can collect sets, combining shoes, pants, a shirt, hat, and some other accessories for a complete set. There are sets based on world events like Halloween, while companies or designers have designed other sets.

Closing Thoughts

Wearables open up a new world of opportunity. Just like in the real world, people care what they wear in a virtual environment. We are unique beings, and our avatars should be, too. This is why most people want them to represent their specific sense of style, which separates them on a higher level from other participants in Decentraland. 

This trend opens a lot of opportunities for anyone involved:

• Users are free to express their individuality.
• Designers can earn money from their creations.
• Investors can grow their investments.

What’s more, participants could all communicate and interact with each other, explore the virtual world, and have a lot of fun.

In recent months we’ve seen fashion shows and NFT artists designing shoes and selling physical and NFT versions of them. The Amsterdam-based fashion company The Fabricant is working solely with digital fashion. Meanwhile, Boson Protocol aims to be the Shopify for NFT and physical fashion. Digital fashion is well and truly on the rise, and we are keeping a close eye on its developments.