Alexandre de Betak on the Future of the Fashion Show | MVFW 2022 Panel Series

Show designer Alexandre de Betak joins David Cash for the opening talk of the MVFW 2022 Panel Series, recorded for the first Metaverse Fashion Week in Decentraland in March 2022. De Betak traces the fashion show from the live room to TV, webcasts, and the phone screen, explains what two pandemic seasons taught him about liveness, and makes the case for a metaverse that builds experiences the physical world cannot hold, starting with shows free of gravity.

Watch on YouTube

Chapters

1. 00:00 Welcome to Metaverse Fashion Week
2. 02:42 Alexandre de Betak introduces himself
3. 04:11 From live audiences to TV, webcasts, and Instagram
4. 07:04 What COVID taught fashion shows about liveness
5. 13:10 Web3, interactivity, and new audiences
6. 15:47 Low-poly worlds and the precision of high fashion
7. 20:56 Immersion and otherworldly show design
8. 23:40 Gravity, and why early metaverse stores copied reality
9. 31:09 Merging physical and virtual experiences
10. 34:49 The shows that needed the metaverse
11. 37:34 Closing thoughts

Speakers

• Alexandre de Betak, fashion, furniture, and experience designer; founder, Bureau Betak
• David Cash, curator of MVFW (host)

Key topics

• How runway shows changed as audiences moved from the venue to TV, the web, and phones
• Why film-only shows during COVID felt less moving than live ones
• Interactivity as the change Web3 brings to the fashion show
• Polygon limits in virtual worlds and the precision high fashion depends on
• Why early metaverse retail looked like the physical world, and the case for otherworldly design
• Merging physical and virtual experiences, and the hope that this helps with sustainability

In their words

"One of the first forces of nature we can't go against on the real world is gravity" (Alexandre de Betak)

"the technology, believe it or not, I'm sorry to say, is way behind" (Alexandre de Betak)

How to cite

APA: Cash, D. (2022). Alexandre de Betak on the Future of the Fashion Show | MVFW 2022 Panel Series [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/KAm97QxLqM4

Chicago: Cash, David. "Alexandre de Betak on the Future of the Fashion Show | MVFW 2022 Panel Series." Recorded March 2022. YouTube video, 38:55. https://youtu.be/KAm97QxLqM4.

Recording details

Recorded: March 2022

Format: Panel and talk series recorded in Decentraland for Metaverse Fashion Week 2022

Length: 38:55 · Language: English

Curated and hosted by David Cash, produced by Cash Labs

About the series

The MVFW 2022 Panel Series is a set of ten conversations recorded for the first Metaverse Fashion Week, held in Decentraland in March 2022. David Cash curated and hosted the series, produced by his studio, Cash Labs. Designers, artists, technologists, editors, and founders joined him on the main stage to talk about digital fashion, identity, commerce, and craft. The full series is archived on David Cash's YouTube channel.

About this record

Presented with framing, speaker name tags, and captions added in 2026. Captions were machine-transcribed and reviewed by hand, with names checked against speaker introductions. Speaker roles are as of the recording date and may have changed since.

Shared for educational, research, and archival purposes. For corrections, name spellings, or removal requests: david@cashlabs.io

Transcript

Machine-transcribed and reviewed. Timestamps link to the moment in the video.

[0:10] Hello everybody, welcome to the main stage of Decentraland's Metaverse Fashion Week. We are here day one opening panel, really excited to have you all here today. This has been a long time in the making, something that we've been working on for quite a while now, and it's finally real. We're here, we're in the Metaverse, we're celebrating virtual fashion, and right now you can go anywhere in Decentraland and see incredible activations by brands ranging from Dolce & Gabbana and Estée Lauder all the way down to some of your favorite virtual fashion brands who have come out of this space and who you probably already know and love. So I'm really excited about this week, can't wait for you all to come and explore and see the Metaverse in full force. And in order to kick off this week, I feel like it makes sense to add some context into why this is important in the realm of the fashion industry.

[0:59] Because obviously here we're celebrating fashion, this is a fashion week, so we hill stuff to contextualize this in the world of fashion. The fashion industry is one of the largest industries in the world. There are a lot of amazing things about the fashion industry, there's a lot of problematic elements of the fashion industry. Over the course of this week we'll discuss issues ranging from e-commerce to sustainability to craftsmanship, and I believe that all these issues are just as relevant to the Metaverse and in virtual fashion as they are in the real world. So as we start to wrap our minds around this idea of digital identities, virtual fashion, and the Metaverse, I feel like it makes sense for us to start by taking a step back, considering the fashion world of which we're coming from, and considering how we can use the past and how we can use what currently exists to dictate the way that we are going to work

[1:45] and live and interact with fashion in the future moving forwards. So in order to do that, we have an amazing list of panelists for you over the course of these four days. Members in their own rights, artists, designers, founders, and more. And in order to kick off our panel series, I'm very excited about our very first guest. This is somebody who I can safely say is a legend within the fashion industry, Business of Foud and 500, a designer of so many different kinds, from fashion to furniture to experiences and beyond. Alexander de Bitac is one of the most sought after designers of runway shows and experiences, and has been for quite some time. And we are very lucky to have him with us today for our opening panel conversation discussing the state of the arts of fashion and what it's going to look like as we move into the Metaverse.

[2:35] So with all of that being said, I would like to pass the mic over to the incredible gentleman I'm sharing the stage with today, Alexandre de Bitac. Alexandre, would you like to introduce yourself, just for people who may not be familiar with you and your work, and let people know what you're excited about this week during Fashion Week? Sure. I mean, I'll start by saying, well, my name is Alex de Bitac. I have, as you said, created together with a great team and with amazing designers for many, many years, a lot of fashion shows, exhibitions, experiences, and also designs of many other things. And I'm very excited to be with you here to talk about the future. I mean, I guess we're going to put back in perspective the story of fashion shows for a minute in its past so that we can look ahead towards the future of it. Yeah, absolutely.

[3:25] I mean, I think it's really important when we're considering, you know, I like to contextualize and when I'm contextualizing, I like to consider the history of the future and then the now. So where is this coming from? Where do we think this is going to go? And what are we going to do about it right now? So yeah, I think this is a very exciting time. And again, for context, just for folks who might not be familiar, do you want to maybe, you don't have to mention your whole careers. I'm sure people can, you know, read your Wikipedia page, etc. But I'm wondering if you have any thoughts or if you want to take people through maybe a little bit of a journey on how fashion has changed over the past few years. Maybe if you want to give us an example of a runway show you did before COVID. And then if you want to maybe mention a project you were working on during this pandemic time. And I would just love for people to see how much things have changed, even in the

[4:08] past few years, let alone the past decade. Right. I was going to say, well, in the past many decades, we have studied, you know, close to 100 years ago. We have, since I started, in the past few decades, seen fashion shows and fashion awards go from being orientated towards a live audience to then the beginnings of fashion shows on TV and live TV, which was not that long ago. I mean, when I studied, you know, less than 30 years ago, 30 years ago, about shows were starting to appeal to wider audience. And when I started, I started to create and think how they could be even more appealing and more TV-genic for that wider audience. And then, obviously, came internet and we started with internet and we created a private act together with a team then at V2R Secret, the first live webcast show on the internet over 20 years ago, 22 or 23 years ago.

[4:58] And it crashed internet for the first time I met them ever inside. And then came social media and then came Instagram. And so the shows went from TV to computer screens on the web to phone screens on the palm of your hands. And from then, about 10 years ago, I guess, we started really creating the show, creating the show, sorry, for the live audience, but for a bigger, wider live audience on the palm of the hand, on the phone. And at that point, it was a first revolution because it was a much bigger audience, but also it was a much smaller screen. And there was a lot more shows already back then. So the competition of content and attention seeking was bigger. And I guess that's when we started. And also the point of view that the audience was going to have is going to be from everyone, from everywhere.

[5:46] Not just the one we designed from the front of the runway, from what we call the media riser, which is where the official media used to be and still are, by the way, but from the sides where the audience would be, from whenever they would be in order to shoot. So we would design it more 360, in a much shorter way, so that it's attention live on Instagram. And that's been about 10 years now since Synthave evolved. In fact, it was only photos and it became video, then it became longer videos. As per se, I think it was 15 seconds video, then 30, then minutes, nights, full length live. We forget this thing. Then they're, I mean, they're very recent. It's only been, it's less than 10 years, maybe the past five years, since we have full-time video on Instagram and on other media. And then came the other medias that we all know.

[6:37] And now we're obviously getting into the metaverse, but in between, as you said, there was, there was a pandemic. In between came COVID and the revolution that I've started using the way we do fashion shows and the way we wanted to show them on social media and to film them got accelerated and a bit sidetracked during COVID. Of course, COVID took us all by surprise, including ask people to do fashion shows in England. And it's interesting because it only lasted, I mean, it lasted two years, but really there was only two seasons that got really affected. And at the beginning, many houses tried to reinvent the show for the screen only, but without a live audience.

[7:30] Some did fashion shows, some did what we call narrative movies, some turned to the movie world to work with directors to do low movies, short movies with a collection involving talent, involving models, involving a lot of different type of people. Some looked to themselves to something more experimental, bigger houses, bigger, of course, projects, smaller ones, these more humble projects, but everyone experienced. But the one thing we noticed was in all these experiences and some were great and some were not. And the first season was first, it was very experimental. The second season was more seasoned, of course, so it was way better done. But nevertheless, to my opinion, at least, the non-live film-only experiences of fashion shows didn't really work as well as the life-transmitted fashion shows did prior to that.

[8:32] And a fashion show is not just showing fashion. A fashion show got successful in the past decade because it interested and increased the amount of people because of all of the experience it gives to its audience. It's, of course, watching premiering, watching the collection of the designer in the house and it's the main reason of the fashion shows. But really, it's also a global experience of a shared and watching the audience getting to it, shared with the different audiences going to it. It's an experience of the time we're in. I mean, it's a great live, short exposure of the times we're living. And for that reason, I think audiences who've been more and more watching fashion shows live in the past decade have grown into wanting more and more, but also they've grown into learning and appreciating the energy, the stress, the adrenaline, and in a way, the non-rehearsed, live, once-only experiment

[9:42] that a fashion show kind of is. And for that reason, that's one of the reasons, but for that reason, mainly, I want to believe that it worked a bit less also because when you do a live show with a live audience, with live humans as talent, with live cueing, with live directing, with live directing the cameras, there is that big adrenaline that generates a much bigger emotion, not only live, but also for the people who are watching something happen in life. They're watching live on the screen, but they're watching something live. And even though they're not, they're live, I have the conviction that some of that emotion and stress is transmitted to them in a way that makes that live event more memorable, more moving, and more eventful, even for the ones watching it on the screen.

[10:35] No, I think that's a great point. I personally come from a background, originally, of theater and then film production. So for me, it's all about the moment and it's all about theatricality. And I think that in some of the conversations that we've recorded for this week, the conversation around performativity and authenticity has come up quite a few times, this idea of, as you're saying, the adrenaline, the moment, and the now, how anything can go wrong, but it's this ultra, ultra heightened few moments. Some of the biggest fashion shows in the world can be 30 minutes, if not 15 or 10 minutes. And in these 10 minutes, so much happens, and so a year, if not more, of work comes out on a stage from dozens, if not hundreds of people. And it's really incredible. And I think that I love the fact that you're discussing this process of taking that idea, that immediate experience, which is typically pretty exclusive,

[11:25] and the idea of how important it was to bring that to the general audience through video and recording shows. And as you said, even prioritizing almost the media pit more than the guests, because obviously way more people are going to be seeing it through those photos on Vogue Runway, or that video on fashion TV, or whatever decade we're in, in terms of getting access to that show. And I think I'd love to hear your thoughts on this idea because it is in the same vein of thought. But as we consider the idea of access and accessibility when it comes to fashion, you've obviously worked on so many different shows. I'm sure that some of your shows have been seen by the public, also as exhibitions. And we have had ways in the past, especially fashion designers, finding ways, like I said, to exhibit their work, doing the Yves Saint Laurent Museum, or Yers van Herpen Museum exhibition, these kinds of things where you try

[12:15] to have a more immediate experience with your audience. But from my perspective, even more so, I think that what we're doing this week during Metaverse Fashion Week, and even with brands, as I mentioned, as big as Dolce & Gabbana and ETRO, giving people a chance to come and witness tangibly is a word I like to use, tangibly experience the work and the shows that these brands have built, and be able to actually come and experience it themselves. So I would love to hear your thoughts on this idea because obviously you've worked on a ton of different shows that have been translated in every medium up to this point, captured on drones, on 360 cameras, iPhones, as you said, on everything. So I would love to hear your thoughts on, yeah, how increasing this level of accessibility to fashion shows can help push the industry forwards, I guess, change the way that we perceive fashion in a runway context.

[13:05] God, it's a lot of topics in one sentence you just started. Accessibility, I think, is already there. What we're changing with Web3 and Metaverse would probably more the interactivity rather than the accessibility. And I guess we're just at the premises of it. And I'm very excited to see what you're coming up with this first Metaverse Fashion Week, which I'll be watching as well. What, we're left things just in the topic we talked about earlier. So COVID taught us that filmed on non-live fashion shows are less captivating and less memorable and less moving than they are when they're seen live and happen in life. That's what we learned. Nevertheless, we learned, I mean, I'll make an interview, we learned to film them better.

[13:53] We dedicate a lot more energy, us and the houses and the designers are thinking and working on how to film them and how to stream them. And this is something that's gonna stay. It's becoming more qualitative, more inventive, more creative. There are more points of view. We have added some tricks of pre-recording parts that we will add into the live, the live streaming of them to make the experience for the viewer more interesting. But nevertheless, as I said before, I believe in the importance of the live-ness for most of it. I also personally believe in the importance of different types of experiences. I think the world lately has allowed us and in a way, the correspondibilities that we need to bring into what we do is forcing us to see things differently and to open up to a lot of different ways of showing and doing what we do and not always doing the same thing all the time.

[14:54] That's very important. Which again, Metabus and Web 3 can be an alternative. It's not just, I don't think it's a replacing medium personally, I think it's an alternative medium. I think that the accessibility that it will give will be more about opening it to new generations and new types of viewers that were not necessarily interested. I believe that the original Web 3 user and viewer wants, of course, more interactivity, which is what the Metabus and Web 3 will be all about. And that, of course, fashion shows like many other scenes and should evolve well and be among the first to be capable of providing this interactivity with new viewers and new audiences and new generations.

[15:46] I think we're really at the beginning of it. So for some reason, I believe that the technology, believe it or not, I'm sorry to say, is way behind what the creative minds of most of the fashion world and the fashion shoemaking world that I'm part of are wanting from it and are already thinking of. Given the live interaction that Metabus provides with its users or its gamers, the visual qualities linked to its technology are still much lower than what we were used to see and used to provide in the past decade and decades, even. And it's quite interesting, it's quite weird to see that the world has evolved and the fashion world's fashion will evolve into more sophistication and more precise majoring to a very, very, very high level, whatever the style, it's more precise within its own style.

[16:44] The video game world has evolved into a higher, insanely high level of sophistication and precise majoring and also level of image quality. And then arrives Web3 and the Metabus and suddenly we go backwards to a very pixelized, to a very cubic cartoon-like kind of looking environments for reasons I technologically understand, for reasons of its sudden gigantic new weight of interaction and quantity of users. And of course, I'm hoping that the technology will advance very quickly so that we can soon enough play in the Metabus and act in the Metabus with the same level of, quality is a subjective word, but precision that we bring in what we do, whatever the style, whatever the style of quality.

[17:44] I'm not saying I don't understand the aesthetics of the existing Metabus platforms, I understand why they're interesting because they're part of the world, they're part of the technological evolution and that backwardness into Web3 through Metabus is an interesting scene that I wanna play with as well. But nevertheless, you have to understand that what makes fashion and high fashion so desirable is also the precision of the execution of its creatives and of its creators and of its designers. That's what makes it so different, that makes it bigger and higher still than other creations or industries. So to respect that precision of creation, technology needs to get higher in the way it executes it, in the way it shows it with viewer.

[18:40] Otherwise, we're going backwards and we may even lose some of the designers and some of the viewers because we're losing the definition and we're losing the subtlety. And the subtlety in the world of high end fashions and high end creation and art in general is extremely important. However, nevertheless, I think designers and houses today are all fascinated and interested by what's happening on the web. So all can adapt in a way for now, their creations and ways of creating to the new tool, which is a less precise tool, but nevertheless an important tool. Surely whole hoping that we get into the same level of precision that we deal with, the way they create, the way we show it, the way they filmed, the way it's shot, the way it's advertised and even the way it's consumed.

[19:31] No, brilliant. Such great points there. I think one thing you touched on, which I think is really important for people to consider is, and you're totally accurate at this from my perspective, is the idea that the creatives and the designers and the artisans have already gone beyond the limits of our technologies. And the idea of working within limitations has come up a few times this week because in Decentraland we have a limit to the, we call it the polygon camp, but how high quality essentially a garment can be. And that is a limitation and hopefully those limitations won't exist in the near future. I think it's really interesting how designers have worked within those, but the conversation that we've been having over the past week, quite a lot, is what would happen when those barriers were removed? What if we could design anything? And we do definitely have a few brands this week who I would consider digital craftsmen

[20:21] maybe on the same level as some of the people who manufacture hot couture. As you're saying, it's these fine, fine details, these little tiny things that unfortunately in most virtual worlds right now would not even be able to come up. But luckily since Decentraland, from my perspective, luckily since Decentraland promotes interoperability and is an open metaverse, at least for now, in this kind of interim, we're able to click on something, go out to another website and be able to witness it in its higher quality. Unfortunately, we're not able to do that in a fully immersive sense yet, but I think it's coming. And that actually leads me to a perfect segue to another question I had for you. When we're thinking of the idea of being immersive, obviously this is your field, this is your world that you live in, the idea of creating an immersive experience. And when we consider taking fashion shows

[21:06] beyond a runway and into the metaverse, that's exactly the conversation we're having, right? So we had some runway shows that we're presenting over the course of this week in the metaverse, but beyond that, some brands who wanted to do a specific experience, they didn't wanna do a runway. They wanted to do some kind of an experience that would only be possible in the metaverse. And I think the reason I wanna pass this question to you is I think even before the idea of the metaverse became possible, I think you were one of the people in the world of design who kind of already thought beyond the confines of typical reality. And this idea of thinking beyond the confines of reality, I think is very important to this week because obviously people are coming up with ideas that couldn't physically exist in the real world. But that being said, if we look back at some of the runway shows you've done,

[21:48] you've created worlds and you've created otherworldly experiences for people to enter and take part of. And I would love to hear some of your thoughts on that process and yeah, why that immersion is so important to really selling the fashion experience. Yeah, it's a very good point. I mean, to go back to the beginning of what you said. So yes, as you said, we are often ahead of technology. I mean, even with Instagram it's doing very well, but we've constantly in conversation with them and say, why can't we bring up the interactivity more? Play a lot more with the viewer and give more exclusive experiences to each. But the bandwidth is not there yet, even though it's amazing, it's still not there. And sometimes we shoot to millions of people live, but we still don't have the bandwidth to bring the interaction at the level of quality we wish.

[22:42] It's the same obviously in the metaverse. And as you may know, I have tried and I'm already for the past many months spoken in fact with the teams at Decentraland about trying to not only change a bit that polygon It's a limitation, yeah. But also bring it live, which we're working on with Decentraland. We're working on the live aspect of it, which is a complicated one. But truly, as you said, I have myself a chance with the amazing designers and houses I worked for and with my amazing team all over the years help create some already otherworldly environments. And of course, metaverse is a huge attraction for me because I'm dreaming of even much more other worldliness.

[23:33] And of course, I'm dreaming of shows and immersive experiences, which would take you out of your comfort zone, would take you out of gravity to start with. One of the first forces of nature we can't go against on the real world is gravity, which of course is one of the first ones for me we should actually alter and experience differently in the virtual life, in the virtual world. And it was interesting to see lately or recently that a lot of the first, I mean, they were called web three without necessarily being completely web three, but some of the first retail and fashion and even luxury experiences on the metaverse in the past few months or even a year were so always similar to reality. And it's a great question also to ask.

[24:21] There must be a reason why most people go in the metaverse, go into the virtual world of web three through NFTs, through shows, through exhibitions, through houses that they designed the vehicles and even stores. And for some reason, they make them look exactly the same than they did in real life. And there's something scary about it because it probably shows how, well, A, most people need the comfort zone of what they know to start getting into something and being attracted by it, which I understand and respect. And B, it also shows that a lot of the people maybe unconsciously think of replacing the real physical life with a virtual one. I'm for both of them. I mean, you can see a tree behind me I'm fasting in the country for a week.

[25:10] And I'm actually promoting my friend's idea. I did, you know, casually live experiences. I was at the Chateau a couple of weeks ago. That's why I'm wearing this. And I just noticed when I got on the screen. I'm at the Chateau Marmont today. But I strongly believe in the need of both experiences in life, both live and virtual. But I also strongly believe that what the metaverse should bring to our lives, what Web Street should bring to our life and technology in general, is something that will come in addition to what the real world. And in a way to almost help us amplify both the virtual worlds should help us appreciate and amplify more what the physical world can give us as physical experiences.

[25:59] And in a way, probably also help us do in the virtual world what we could do in the virtual world better and possibly hopefully soon, sustainably better. Maybe there will be a way that we do things that are otherworldly, that are more impressive, more emotional, differently emotional on the metaverse because there are things we cannot do physically live in the real world. Also because we do them in the metaverse. The day, hopefully the technology also solves a lot of the unsustainable issues of Web Street crypto and metaverse and make them way more sustainable than they are today. And make such experiences more sustainable on the metaverse than life.

[26:50] And in the same time differentiate more the virtual life to the physical one than I think there's something really important and interesting coming. I think that hopefully what started as a replica of the real world, that virtual will start disappearing and all we will see will be new virtual experiences that are designed and created and then shared and lived with the users in ways and for experiences that couldn't be done in the real world. And maybe there'll be a shift of parts of our lives. Maybe part of the work life of many will be only on the virtual world. Maybe part of the social life, one part will be on the social world.

[27:40] Maybe that will bring part of the showing off to happen on that social life. Part of what the reasons why people invest in inexpensive clothes or accessories or even art or even parts of those houses that they show off will be the virtual one. And that may lead to part of the physical life becoming way more in a way, way more lived, way more nature-oriented, way more extreme, way more physical, way less superficial. Maybe there will be different types of relationships when they're lived physically versus the ones that are lived socially but virtually only. And I think that's fascinating. But I think that's fascinating only if we allow it and ourselves let meta become another world, not a replica of the same world.

[28:33] That would be very sad. If we lived our physical world in the metaverse and no longer in the physical world and not create something new in the metaverse which is what it should be about because it's a new tool that allows no boundaries. And I guess we missed it but I think the reason we're talking here now is that we are the premises of it and I think we all want, at least we want to make sure we're gonna use the metaverse and it's technology and it's bound, I mean, it's lack of boundaries to create new worlds that we couldn't have created in the real world. Beautiful, beautiful. Such great points there. One thing I have to pick up on that you mentioned is this idea of some people considering the metaverse as an escape from life. Because I think you mentioned like, yes, it's part of that. And sure, maybe for some people, but I think the conversation that we've been having around the central line fashion when we consider

[29:25] an event like this is we wanna consider what we can add to people's lives, like what value we can add to people's lives via the metaverse. As you said, what can they do in these virtual spaces that they can't do in real life? What can we add to the experience? And I think that that's, I love that you brought up that point. And also, just to tie that in, I think it's also a really poignant concept that why are we building structures that imitate the real world? Why is life imitating life? Where's the arch in the process? I do think that we're seeing a lot of examples for the first time maybe, or some of the first times this week in terms of kind of new age architecture. As you said, things floating in the air, things glowing or on fire. And I really do encourage people to kind of keep pushing this boundary.

[30:14] Again, like you said, we're not working within the confines of gravity here. We're not working within the confines of reality. So anything is possible. So just to wrap up some of these thoughts because I know your time is very valuable and I really appreciate your insights. But obviously you're already thinking about the metaverse and what's next. I can tell by the words you're using, the way you're talking, you're already familiar with the idea of web3 and that makes me personally really happy. But as we're considering this idea of taking the experiences that you've been building over the past couple decades, these incredible already out of these world's experiences and bringing them into the metaverse, you already touched on a couple points, but is there anything you're particularly excited about? Maybe if we consider Metaverse Fashion Week 2023, what's something that you would like to be able

[30:59] to pull off in the near future? Love to pull off at the beginning of this and then see how they, is the merge of the two. Is how we merge the real life with the virtual life? How we merge the physical experience and the life physical experience through the metaverse experience, not just as in let's do something physical and live and show it live in the metaverse, as in a real merge, as in having the metaverse influence the physical world and having the physical world influence the meta world and having those two happen live, as I said earlier, it's a very big challenge I know today for central and for all platforms, but I think it's hopefully something we're working on quick enough to solve it. And that I think is a first challenge I would find very interesting.

[31:49] I think it opens up a conversation. I think the metaverse could and should be the positive and optimistic answer to those couple of decades past of more live physical life spent and lost sometimes behind the screen for our generation and for the generation after us and the one even after. Hopefully, if we manage to explore soon enough which is now, how we can merge the two and get the best out of both and give the importance that both needs without losing one or the other with total respect to the kids and the youngest, youngest ones with most of their life on the metaverse or at least on the screen for now, but really on the interaction of their peers on the screen and try to bring in some physical interaction and physical influence, I think would be amazing.

[32:47] So I'm fascinated by both, but I'm even more fascinated by how we can merge them together and make the best of both of them at the same time. That's really exciting. I can't wait to see how that manifests. I think that people are just starting to talk about that idea in practicality now. And I think some of the first examples we're seeing, obviously we're not seeing anything in an experience yet or in a show, but we have little examples like right now you can go to Boson Protocol's shopping district and you can buy something in the metaverse and you can get it also in real life. And I feel like that's just the start of this idea that you're talking about. And I think that's really encouraging. And yeah, the blending of realities and this extended reality or XR experience that people are trying to work towards, I think is most definitely the future. And when worlds, as you mentioned, but when worlds like the central land

[33:34] or sandbox or spatial, et cetera are able to come out of the computer and into our surroundings and then back into our computer when we can have this kind of really seamless blend, then things will really change. And vice versa. The real world would influence what happens in that world. That would be a real change. And hopefully that may bring a hopeful part of solutions to sustainability problems and to ecological issues where some of what we, some of what the world wants and feels it can't leave without in terms of what its consumption can be done virtually only. And other parts, the one, is it? Yeah, a hundred percent.

[34:23] I mean, one of the panels you can come and tune into it, I think on day three, sustainability, the panel, the lovely girls from DressX, they mentioned all the time, a ton of amazing statistics. Like if we switched 1% of fashion that's currently physical to digital, we would save something like 90 million barrels of water a year or something. You know, there's these crazy statistics of just making the tiniest bit of change in the industry. And I think now's the time, why not? I think we're open to it. We already spend so much time virtually. I have one last question for you if that's all right. I know we're coming to the end of this conversation, but you sparked me with an idea with the last thing that you said. Obviously worked on so many different shows. And as I've mentioned before, some of your shows have already been larger than life or one could say already outside of the confines of reality.

[35:05] And obviously in reality, those come with insane complications. If you need to hang something massive from the ceiling, there's no real other way to do it than to do it and go about finding a way to make that happen. I'm curious if there's one or maybe a couple of shows, anything that sticks out in your memory of an experiencing from your career that you wish had, you know, in some way, some of the power of the metaverse so that you could do something nearly impossible more easily. Oh my God, there are many, I mean, there are many that I wanna say, but that's why we're talking. That's why I'm still here. And I'm still involved because it's precisely all the ones that I hope we'll be doing in a very near future where we can bring the merge of these ideas or at least and use specifically in addition to the physical applied idea, not in state of maybe one day or sometimes, but in addition to the boundary less and the gravity less

[36:00] and in a way the constraint less aspects that the virtual world can bring. The physical one, I mean, I've done, as you said, many that required challenges, physical and technical challenges. I've made, you know, girls fly very fast in the air as angels, and others appear into tunnels of pieces of lasers and snows and bubbles and soaps and works with all sorts of different special effects and flames and wounds. And I'm a bit of a kick for that, you know, I mean, I've been a kid all my life and that's probably the reason I did what I did and the reason I still do it, is that there's something very free-minded and very, it's like in doing what I do and hopefully, Medivirus will bring, will open doors to a new range of technologies and new range of toys, as I may wanna call them, to continue inventing new ways of doing what we do.

[37:07] Beautiful, beautiful. And I love that you call the tools toys because when you really love what you do, it's not work, it's play. And I love the environments that you build and the worlds that you build and I can't wait to see how XR and the Medivirus, you know, continues to help you push things further and further outside of the confines of reality. Amazing, well, I have to say thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to speak with us today. I'm sure everybody who's watching right now very much appreciates it. Do you have any closing thoughts or any place that you would like people to go, maybe a website or something? I mean, I would say, well, yeah, check out what we do and check out what everybody does. I think you need to check out everything. The beauty of fashion is that it has a very wide range of talents, of creatives, of houses, of designers and it's one of the rare worlds

[37:59] where we treat them the same. We as show makers, when we have the chance to work with the designer of the house, whether they're very small or very large, the experience is comparable and we should watch all of them. Beautiful, beautiful. Well, hopefully a bunch of people are inspired now. If you are for any reason unfamiliar with some of Alexander's beautiful work, please take a moment, go to YouTube and just see some of these incredible worlds that he's built. And hopefully that'll give you some inspiration on what can be possible in the coming years in the metaverse via visionaries such as Alexander. So once again, thank you so much for taking the time. Thank you also to everybody who is watching. We will be back here again for another panel later today with another amazing set of guests. Also, we have a panel later today with Nick Knight which I'm very much looking forward to. Please make sure to tune in again

[38:46] right here on the main stage and we'll be back every day, twice a day for panels with some of the leaders in this fashion industry. So thank you so much again, Alexander and we'll see you in the next one.