Digital future of luxury brands: Metaverse, digital fashion, and non-fungible tokens

Leading luxury brands have incorporated technologies to recreate brand images and reinvent consumer experience. The fashion industry is experiencing a historic transformation thanks to emerging technologies such as blockchain and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) along with impactful technologies such as artificial intelligence (Al), machine learning (ML), and virtual reality (VR). With metaverse as a new social platform around the corner, academics and industry alike are querying how these new technologies might reshape luxury brands, reinvent consumer experience, and alter consumer behavior. This research charts new academic territory by investigating how newly evolved technologies affect the fashion industry. With practical examples of luxury brands, this article has theorized the irreversible trend of digital fashion: the attraction of NFT collectibles. It then proposes intriguing questions for scholars and practitioners to ponder, such as will young consumers, essentially living online, buy more fashion products in the digital world than in the real world? How can the fashion industry strategize for the coexistence of digital collections and physical goods?