Metaverse
Fashion
Opera
Metaverse Fashion Opera is an innovative project to explore the border between Metaverse, fashion, and music.
Images by Jarno Leppanen and KA WA KEY, Astrid Kearney and Claire Shovelton
A New Phase: Fashion Opera in the Metaverse
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.
The immersive, reality-bending imagination of China’s first metaverse platform Dragon City will combine with Fashion Opera to create a new work — and a new stage in developing this nascent genre.A collective of artists and designers will collaborate on a piece that excavates the history of the Metaverse, telling its story from the very beginning of human experience to its realization 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?
a whole exciting new genre of art
-- BBC Radio 3
a groundbreaking new genre
-- Classical Music Magazine
a perfect combination of show and costume
-- Vogue Italia
#CAPITAL
METAVERSE FASHION OPERA FOR MVFW23
Where: Dragon City, Decentraland, The Metaverse
When: 28th March 2023
For Metaverse Fashion Week 2023, the immersive, reality-bending imagination of China’s first metaverse platform Dragon City is to host Alastair White’s latest fashion opera (“a whole exciting new genre of art” — BBC Radio 3): #CAPITAL.
Led by the fashion week’s ambassador, Gemma A. Williams, and Dragon City’s Roy Zou, a collective of artists and designers will collaborate to excavate the history of the metaverse, telling its story from the very beginning of the human experience to its realization in MVFW23.
#CAPITAL 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 art— to bitcoin, avatars and Dragon City itself. It is the story of becoming something else — where everything is always possible.
The work, scored for soprano and drum machine, is performed by the award-winning Kelly Poukens (“a soprano in a thousand” — Klassiek Centraal).It features — and is inspired by — the designs of Chenpeng, a brand that sees no boundary between the possible and the impossible, and which has been characterized as both “anti-tradition and deviant” (Antidote magazine). Danced and choreographed by Zara Sands, the piece will be performed in a specially designed “fashion opera house” within Dragon City.
House of Synergos
House of Synergos is the first opera house was ever built in the Metaverse, located in Dragon City, built by Metaverse Labs, and designed by Sybarite. Sybarite is an architectural studio best known for contributing to the ever-changing face of benchmark retail, experiential culture, and hospitality.
Sybarite
Founded by McIntosh and Simon Mitchell in 2002, Sybarite is a global design studio leading the evolving world of experiential culture in retail & hospitality. Its works include SKP Beijing, SKP Chengdu, and SKP Xi'an.Partnered with Sybarite, we created the first immersive virtual Fashion Opera House in Dragon City, the first Metaverse in China.
Founding Members
Gemma A. Williams
Gemma A. Williams is a writer and curator with a particular interest in the China market and Chinese designers. She is the editorial director at the luxury China publication Jing Daily where she launched the metaverse vertical Jing Meta. Gemma completed an MA in Fashion Curation at the London College of Fashion and a BA in Communications (Film & Broadcasting) from Trinity College Dublin.
Alastair White
Alastair White (b.1988) is a Scottish composer and writer. His work is characterized by a lyrical complexity that draws influence from technology, science, politics, and materialism, and has been described as "a whole exciting new genre of art" (BBC Radio 3), “spellbinding” (Boulezian), "perfect" (Vogue Italia), "genuinely original" (TEMPO), “highly poetic...excellent” (BBC Music Magazine), "deftly manic" (American Record Guide) "passionately atonal" (Gramophone) and "the height of compositional magnificence" (Fanfare).
Roy Zou
Roy is one of the early enlighteners of Blockchain since 2011 in China. He was the most dedicated initiator of the crypto communities of Bitcoin, Dogecoin, and Ethereum and is well-known for educating the mainstream of blockchain. He also is a pioneer of the Blockchain industry, founding the Blockchain Ventures studio Goedel Labs in 2017 and the first startup of Metaverse -- Metaverse Labs in 2018.
Soprano & Choreographer
Kelly Poukens
Soprano
Belgian soprano Kelly Poukens (*1992) is the winner of the Stiftung Blatow prize in the International Anton Rubinstein Competition (Germany, 2018), the silver award in the Manhattan International Music Competition (USA, 2017), she was runner-up in the Honda Competition for Classical Music (2017, Brussels, Belgium), won the Prix Sophie, Laureates Award and Audience Price during the finals and preliminaries of the Princess Christina Competition (2012, The Hague, the Netherlands).
ZARA SANDS
Choreographer
Based in England, Zara wrote and directed her first professional film in 2016 at age 18, resulting in the experimental short, ‘BULLDOGS’, which was acquired by Channel 4’s Random Acts. ‘BULLDOGS’ was exhibited during PLAYBACK Festival at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) and toured to various venues as part of the PLAYBACK Touring Exhibition. The film was also screened at the BFI Southbank, as part of the BFI’s Girlfriends Season.
What is Fashion Opera?
Images by Jarno Leppanen and KA WA KEY, Astrid Kearney and Claire Shovelton
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.