Digital Fashion
Future
The Complete Guide to NFTs and Why They Matter To Your Fashion Brand
What's an NFT?
NFT stands for “non-fungible token”. Which doesn’t really clear anything up at all, does it? Didn’t think so.
To put it a bit simpler, an NFT is a way of binding together a digital asset with a blockchain token that certifies that asset as being original. That digital asset can be anything… A photo, video, or a 3D model. In the case of a fashion NFT, it could be a 3D model of your design.
Still confusing? Think of an NFT like a safe deposit box where you put something valuable that’s digital. If you own the NFT, then you also own the asset that it’s connected to. In other words, it’s a good way of proving that you own something that could otherwise be easily copied, like a digital photo for example.
As a fashion brand, you’re concerned with protecting your creative property. A fashion NFT offers you a way to lock up your creative property and prove your ownership.
But that's not all. Not even close ...
The Future of Fashion is Digital
People live a signficant portion of their lives online.
A recent study shows the average person spends 6 Hours and 59 Minutes consuming digital content every day. Whether you like it or not, that trend is not going to change anytime in the near future.
As people spend more time online, they begin to spend more time curating their online personas and they spend more money online. Not just buying stuff online to use in the real world, but spending money on virtual products. The digital wearables market is estimated to be over $100 BILLION USD in annual value.
Some experts expect the digital wearables market to outgrow the fashion industry within just a few years.
So How Does This Affect Your Fashion Brand?
Top 3 Reasons
Why Your Fashion Brand Cannot Afford to Miss Out on Fashion NFTs
(Literally!)
Secure your creative property
Creative rights are difficult to prove and that is particularly true in the fashion space. There are few options available for designers to adequately document their designs and be able to prove their origin. But fashion NFTs present a unique opportunity to prove your authorship of a design
The blockchain timestamps the NFT and locks it in an encrypted file, so you’ll always be able to prove ownership of your own work. Exactly how this plays out from a legal perspective in the future is anyone’s guess at this point.
But this is one party you don’t want to be late for.
license your creative property
As a designer, you have new opportunities to market your designs digitally. You no longer need to focus on selling entirely in the “real” world. You can also market your designs to game and software developers, offering your fashion line on license.
Developers are NOT fashion designers, as you may have noticed from the total lack of creativity in much of the software you encounter online. Software developers will increasingly rely on fashion designers to create authentic, fashionable looks for the legions of new users coming online in the metaverse who don’t want to look like a character from a fantasy novel.
Create a virtual retail shop
Online multi-player games and virtual spaces have long been dominated by a certain type of person. And the digital wearables market catered to that demographic. So, most virtual “fashion” has not been what most people in the fashion world would call “fashionable”. However, that fact is rapidly changing as more and more people come online from all walks of life.
As I mentioned above, not everyone is going to want to wear shining magical robes and steampunk boots. In fact, there’s hard evidence to support that the majority of people prefer for their digital avatars to bear some resemblance to their physical identities. This means that as more and more people go online, they’re going to want their digital selves to be just as fashionable as their physical selves. Their sense of style is not likely going to be left behind in the physical world.
In fact, because of the fact that digital fashion can be sold at a lower price, the likelihood is that consumers will begin to explore fashion more deeply as new styles become more affordable online. A consumer’s “digital closet” could be far more extensive than their physical closet.
It’s easy to see where this is headed! Wearable fashion is the future of fashion.