For Jean-Christophe Babin, chief executive of Bulgari, the question is not whether luxury goods brands should enter the metaverse . . . but how. He worries about his high-end jewellery being “worn by a cubic avatar that looks like three pieces of Lego put together”. But he can imagine a Bulgari “gem discovery game”.
The metaverse is a term coined by Neal Stephenson, in his 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash, for a “computer-generated universe” in which people communicate via avatars.
Today, its meaning varies. “[It is] partly a dream of the future of the internet and partly a way to encapsulate current trends in online infrastructure, including the growth of real-time 3D worlds,” according to Metaverse and Money: Decrypting the Future, a report published by Citi GPS in…