As luxury fashion manufacturers introduce NFT collections, culture and cryptocurrency collide
In the first half of 2021, NFTs as an asset class dominated the crypto market. NFTs earned more than $2.5 Billion worldwide. NFTs provide tremendous advantages for firms, artists and content creators.
The greater acceptance of NFTs, helps bring together – culture and technology. The luxury clothing industry has shown early interest in NFTs. Dolce & Gabbana (D&G) and Jimmy Choo have recently introduced their NFT range. Megan Kaspar, MD of Magnetic Capital and member, Red DAO believes that fashion is immensely attractive as an NFT category.
Impact on the Fashion Industry
NFTs for fashion products, is just beginning to take off. The value of fashion products decreases with time. On the other hand, digital fashion products remain intact and their value can even increase with time.
Digital fashion products, unlike physical ones can even be presented as collateral. Designers opine that NFTs and fashion should be seen as culture, and not technology.
Culture is most critical for a fashion brand. However, blockchain technology, through NFTs provide the benefits of immutability and provenance. Even though the idea of digital fashion is still new, D&G, recently, were able to sell a nine-piece NFT collection for around $5.7 million.
Jimmy Choo, known for its luxury accessories range, intends to introduce an NFT effort together with the artist Eric Haze. The brand also put out for auction, on the Binance platform, a digital version of a shoe from the collection.
Although still in its infancy, the concept of digital fashion offers significant advantages. NFTs will gain traction as metaverse capabilities increase with greater investments by social media companies.
In the future, more brands may be expected to create NFTs to keep with the growing trend. Many brands are jumping into the fray to capture a share of the market. Many brands, however, still do not completely understand the possibilities of wearable digital fashion and the full potential of NFTs.
