Early last year, an image surfaced of Elon Musk at the 2018 Met Gala, wearing a pair of sneakers unlike any other. The so-called ‘CYBERSNEAKER’ was designed by RTFKT Studios, and was inspired by the launch of Musk’s highly divisive Cybertruck. The sneakers boasted a blocky, brutalist-inspired aesthetic that was reminiscent of the truck’s design, finished with an exaggerated sole unit and a Nike-esque swoosh along the side. Musk was the first person ever to have been seen wearing them.

Except that he didn’t wear them at all.

In reality, the sneakers were digitally applied to an existing photograph of Musk (who had, in fact, worn a fairly pedestrian pair of patent dress shoes to the gala). The modified image was shared to RTFKT’s 600,000 Instagram followers, many of whom believed it was a real photograph, and the post’s comments were quickly flooded with enquiries about where the footwear could be bought. Though the shoes do not exist — at least, not in the physical world — they were eventually sold for $15,000 USD. One bidder had even offered $40,000 USD for the pair, until they learned that they had not, in fact, been worn by Musk.

Welcome to the world of virtual fashion, where reality and unreality are hard to distinguish.

“We see ourselves as the new age Supreme, for a digital audience.”

RTFKT was officially founded in January of last year, though its founders — Benoit Pagotto, Steven Vasilev and Chris Le — had begun posting content a year earlier, creating digitally-manipulated images designed to spread like wildfire across the internet. On their Instagram feed, Air Jordans appear to levitate in response to a Gucci-monogrammed Infinity Gauntlet; Kanye West and DJ Khaled appear side-by-side in blown-up, tricked-out footwear, and a PlayStation 5-branded sneaker (no, not the awful Zara one) is taken for a debut stroll. Though the shoes defy all logic (and, in many cases, verge onto the IP of existing sneaker brands), RTFKT’s posts have swiftly amassed a growing audience, fascinated by these virtual products and eager to obtain them.

But RTFKT is more than a content creator: their imaginative and otherworldly designs can be bought as virtual products. The brand auctions one pair each month on their website, where customers can bid using cryptocurrency. The winning bidder receives exclusive use of a custom AR filter, which allows them to virtually ‘wear’ their sneakers on Snapchat, Instagram, and other social channels. RTFKT have also begun collaborating with various video gaming engines, which will enable players’ in-game avatars to wear their purchases. So far, every pair released by the brand has sold out, even at a price tag that averages $15,000 USD, and have sold for as much as $40,000 USD. The brand is now exploring a more accessibly priced version, which will retail for around $100 USD, and will be created in limited runs of 100 virtual pairs. A series of yet-to-be-announced fashion collaborations is also slated for later this year. As Vasilev puts it, “We see ourselves as the new age Supreme, for a digital audience.”

Their success — and the scale of their ambitions — is a testament to the growing power of virtual brands, which are capitalizing on our increasingly digital existence. And their ascent has been accelerated by the COVID-19 lockdowns, as consumers have been forced to spend ever-increasing amounts of time living, working and socializing online. “We got lucky with the pandemic, in a sense,” says Pagotto. “It reinforced our vision, which otherwise might have been a bit premature. Now the fashion industry is starting to take a deep interest in virtual spaces.”

As the boundaries between our physical and digital lives become ever more blurred, brands like RTFKT challenge us to consider which of those is the most important. After all, when so many sneakerheads are seeking the clout of copping a hard-to-find style, isn’t an online space the best place to show them off to a wider audience — even if they don’t exist anywhere else? “We’re creating a kind of metaverse where you can use these items,” says Vasilev. “And in some ways, it’s more real than reality. When we posted the Elon Musk image, the internet thought it was real,” he continues. “That image got around fifty million impressions. So if that many people saw the image, then what makes it real, or not?”

The virtual market has extended beyond sneakers, too. Tribute, a ‘contactless cyber fashion’ brand founded last year by designers Filip Vajda and Gala Marija Vrbanic, offers virtual clothing to its customers, with styles that are largely inspired by ’90s clubwear. After paying for a garment, customers are invited to submit an existing (and Instagram-ready) photograph of themselves, which is edited by the brand using CGI to digitally ‘dress’ them in their purchase.