NFTs are fashion’s hottest commodity right now. Dolce & Gabbana did one, Manish Malhotra did one, heck even Salman Khan is planning to launch his own—thankfully, his isn’t fashion.But what do NFTs really mean? Simply put, they are non-fungible tokens—non-interchangeable data units that are unique and stored on a digital ledger like a blockchain that verifies proof of ownership. NFTs can be video, audio, photographs, GIFs or any such digital files.Over a third of millennial millionaires have at least half their wealth in crypto, reports CNBC Millionaire Survey. Gen Z comes a close second.
“Creativity and aesthetics are platform-agnostic,” says Priya Tanna, launch editor-in-chief of Vogue India. “If a song or a tweet, or a GIF of a rock can fetch millions, and be seen as having value, then I guess NFT is a pathway to a different kind of modern and contemporary art.”
Art is the starting point for NFTs but is not limited to it. In early 2021, digital artist Mike Winkelmann, known as Beeple, sold his unique NFT artwork 'Everydays: The First 5,000 Days' on Christie’s for $69 million—the third-highest price paid at auction for an artwork by a living artist.
The technology allows unrecognisable artists to upload their work, directly sell it to the consumers, and do away with the middlemen. “Fashion is always the second industry that follows [art]," says Narresh Kukreja, designer, Shivan & Narresh. However, unlike art, fashion is a physical medium. “You own a painting because you like it and don't care if others do. But fashion is always bought for external sources.”
That, however, hasn’t stopped luxury brands from exploring the concept. Gucci’s NFT called 'Aria'—a three-channel video—was sold in an online auction by Christie’s; Burberry designed NFT characters and accessories for the video game 'Blankos Party' that sold for approximately approx Rs 29 lakh, and Dolce & Gabbana’s inaugural NFT collection fetched approx Rs 41 crore in the sale.
“As an industry, fashion has always understood the storytelling and exclusivity game well,” Shashi Menon, founder of UNXD, a marketplace for digital luxury that collaborated with Dolce & Gabbana for their nine-piece NFT collection, said during the Twitter Spaces conversation. “In that sense, NFTs are a natural extension of something that this industry intrinsically understands and has been getting right for centuries: How to create desirability.”
New York-based digital strategy and consultant Michelle Fang believes that Gen Z is motivated less by material acquisition, equating the piling up of physical items with greed. “For Gen Z, we are inseparable from our phones—but not the device itself. The photos, messages and contacts on the phone are what drive our phone’s value,” she says. For them, rare digitally secure assets are of more value than buying a physical asset, like a car or house. It provides flexible choices and the ability for their assets not to be interchangeable, making NFT investments valuable for them.You are likely to see millionaires with a more robust digital portfolio of assets than physical in the near future. In India, Chainalysis, a blockchain-based data platform, reports crypto investments grew to nearly $6.6 billion in May 2021 from last year’s $923 million. According to a report by Kantar, 16 per cent of people who own cryptocurrency investments in the country are in the age bracket of 25-33 and live in cities, which is hardly surprising as the younger millennials and Gen Z tend to spend money on games like Minecraft and Fortnite.Internationally, luxury brands have been quick to jump on the latest trend, just as they did when they started seeing their shoppers on TikTok. “NFTs allow designers to stretch their creativity to various platforms, to expose themselves to new, younger audiences, and widen their reach,” says Tanna. “For designers, it can be an enormously wonderful marketing tool, sort of akin to not social media, but akin to a disruption and innovation, and interesting collaboration.”
Earlier this year, DressX, the most prominent digital fashion store that sells 3D clothing collections, collaborated with luxury e-retailer Farfetch to create digitised menswear and womenswear pieces for their pre-order collection campaign, including an editorial photo and video shoots to promote pre-orders without any physical materials. “By going digital, we were able to save 3,46,698 litres of water, that is enough for 20 people to drink for 24 years,” the e-commerce site stated.
THE DIGITAL FASHION MARKET IS SET TO BE WORTH $10 BILLION IN THE NEXT FIVE YEARS, BRANDS WHO ARE QUICK TO UNDERSTAND THIS TECTONIC SHIFT IN OUR FASHION CONSUMPTION WILL BENEFIT IN THE COMING YEARS.
Currently, Twitter is the only social media platform that allows you to showcase your NFT as a profile picture, and fashion is consumed to be shown off. But the success of Dolce & Gabbana’s Collezione Genesi NFT is the perfect example of merging the physical, experiential and digital worlds. Buying their NFTs allows users access to the physical garment and invites them to future couture shows for a limited time. The digital version is authorised to be used on any open metaverse.
Mark Zuckerberg recently described the metaverse as “a virtual environment where you can be present with people in digital spaces”—think Fortnite, Grand Theft Auto, but without the killing. Before you panic about Facebook’s involvement with NFTs and their recent rebranding to ‘Meta’, they don’t own the metaverse— it’s any shared 3D virtual environment accessed via the Internet. Some metaverses also use blockchain technology, where you can buy and sell digital assets using cryptocurrency.
“Avatars will be as common profile pictures today, but instead of a static image, they are going to be 3D living representations of you,” Zuckerberg said in a video released at Connect 2021, adding that he hopes for the metaverse to reach billions of people in the next decade. If that’s the future we are looking at, you’ll need a digital wardrobe for your avatar and physical iterations to wear in real life.
Balenciaga has already created a skin for Fortnite users—a white t-shirt with the logo in black but little-known brands like Blanc de Blanc, available on DressX, have been creating custom-order for avatars to wear in the virtual space. They describe themselves on their Instagram bio as a ‘digital fashion studio—a digital-only outfit with custom-made designs can cost up to approx Rs 4,500. The only criteria: you can’t wear this outside the virtual space. You have to upload your photo(s) to which the outfit is applied during check out. Epic Games—behind Fortnite—have even committed $100 million to help game developers and creators (such as Blanc de Blanc) in the 3D world.
“AS AN INDUSTRY, FASHION HAS ALWAYS UNDERSTOOD THE STORYTELLING AND EXCLUSIVITY GAME WELL. IN THAT SENSE, NFTS ARE A NATURAL EXTENSION OF SOMETHING THAT THIS INDUSTRY INTRINSICALLY "Shashi Menon
However, while India has witnessed a boom in cryptocurrency trade—the Indian crypto market is ranked 11th out of 154 nations in terms of cryptocurrency adoption, the government has almost no clarity on the laws around it. You can shop for NFTs either with your credit card or cryptocurrency. Its future depends on the Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Currency Bill, 2021, which is currently awaiting approval from the Union cabinet post which will be introduced in the parliament.
Until then, NFT is a risk few are willing to take. Indian designers have been slow in understanding the digital space: it took a pandemic for most of them to launch their e-commerce sites. But when they do, Tanna believes “it could be absolutely breathtaking.”