New Metaverse Paradigm – Digital Fashion and Virtual Clothing

Posted 8 mins ago | by Catoshi Nakamoto

Hi, I’m Ben. You know me from crypto, but I share some similarities to another Ben you might recognize: Ben Stiller and his character Derek in the movie Zoolander. No, I’m not a male model…yet and I’m not creating a “Centre for Kids who Can’t Read Good, and Want to Learn to do Other Stuff Good Too”¹. I am, however, a bit of a “man of fashion”. I like to think I bring my own style to the crypto space, and with the introduction of the metaverse to a larger audience, we’re seeing style emerge into crypto like we’ve never seen before. What started with designer game skins and a few digital clothing auctions, has now become a budding NFT sector that is set to make waves in the metaverse. Are we going to see virtual clothing for people like you and me hit the main stage of crypto any time soon? Well, let’s give this fashion moment our best “Blue Steel” and dive into the expanding world of digital clothing.

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Let’s get it.

Welcome to Bit Boy Crypto; home of the bitsquad, the largest crypto community in all the interwebs. My name is Ben. Everyday on this channel I show you how to make money in crypto. If you like money and crypto make sure to hit that subscribe button. In this video we look at digital clothing, and what it might mean for the metaverse.

What is digital clothing, and how does it fit into the metaverse? Well, instead of fabrics, they’re pixels: created using 3D software. Digital clothing retailers are making fashion that is mapped to your body, using the same technology you see in filters on snapchat that can turn your face into a piece of pizza. No pineapple please. But who is this digital clothing for? Fashion forward buyers purchase digital clothing without ever touching them, and right now the market is relatively small and made up of instagram influencers and digital clothing collectors. These digital pieces can be easily added or removed from a picture; brining a whole catalogue of different looks, without ever having to do a wardrobe change. There is no need to store or care for physical clothing; and the digital clothes can be kept in the user’s portfolio or sold on an NFT marketplace. Think of gaming skins brought into the real world. The average person can change their entire wardrobe with just the click of a button: like changing the look of a gaming avatar.

There are several brands pioneering this trend, including Tribute, a Croatian company that focuses on materials that people could never wear in the real world. The Fabricant, a Dutch-owned company that designed the first piece of digital couture, and RKFKT, a company that, in five minutes, sold 3.1 million dollars in digital shoes.

And guys, by the way, not pressing the like button is so last season. Take a minute and smash up that like button for more crypto and Metaverse content, and to help support the channel. Leave a comment down below, what do you think of digital clothing? All the rage, or fashion faux pas?

Fashion brands are using the power of digital clothing in a few key ways. They’re capitalizing on the idea of limited editions, allowing customers to see value in purchasing an item of digital clothing because of its rarity. It can also be used as a social token: where creators, musicians and athletes can connect with their fans through unique designs. I can imagine people going to a concert or a game, and posting a picture wearing a limited edition piece of digital clothes. Since they’re blockchain-based, each clothing NFT can represent a piece of media like art, videos, and music: making the NFT more engaging. There would be endless applications in the metaverse for digital clothing: office wear, streetwear and even clothes to wear in the metaverse nightlife. What about esports? We’ve only seen the beginning of fashion skins for video game avatars. It’s an incredibly popular income stream for gaming platforms and I can only see that accelerating from here.

The first time we saw digital clothing was by Scandanavian relatiler Carlings, back in 2018. The collection sold for peanuts compared to today’s NFT pricing standards, because what would soon be called a “digital collectible” was still a very new idea. Nineteen pieces from the Neo-Ex collection sold for about ten dollars each, and once purchased the digital clothing item was tailored to a photo of the buyer, ready to post on social media. This was around the beginning of the “instagram model” culture that we see now. Since then NFTs, social media and how we interact online have changed a lot; and with the metaverse becoming less “virtual” and more “reality” over time, we can only expect more changes in the future.

In May 2019, Cryptokitties and the Fabricant, an Dutch fashion house that aims to “lead the way toward a new sector of digital clothing”, collaborated to create the first ever “digital couture”. The piece, called the Iridescent, was sold at a charity auction for nine thousand five hundred dollars on the Ethereum blockchain.

The sale price shows how far NFTs have come in two short years. At the time, the sale was head-scratching news for some, as they wondered how something that only exists in the digital world could be worth so much money. Fast forward a few months to the NFT boom in 2021, where we see jpegs being sold for thousands, hundreds of thousands, and even millions! And online clothes are starting to follow in those footsteps.

Recently digital fashion startup DRESSX partnered with Crypto.com to release a collection of physical and NFT clothing pieces that sold for 1,855ETH: the equivalent of 5.7 million dollars. The digital clothing pieces in the collection included three embroidered mens jackets, The Impossible Tiara made of gems that can’t be found on earth, and The Doge Crown with seven blue sapphires and one hundred and forty-two diamonds.

Luxury brands see the potential, and they’re now hopping aboard the digital clothing train, with a focus on gaming. Balenciaga and Burberry released a series of skins for the characters in Honor of Kings , Fortnite and Blonkos Block Party. Gaming skins is a profitable business, and it’s only growing. Back in May, Epic games revealed it made fifty million dollars from just one set of Fortnite skins. Puma has inked deals with gaming groups like the League of Legends Gen.G Esports squad of players who will be wearing digital Puma jerseys. Valentino, Marc Jacobs and Anna Sui released skins for Animal Crossing this year, and Givenchy and Gillette Venus created digital items to cater to player’s in-game beauty needs. Shocked by the idea of in-game beauty items? Don’t be. With the metaverse coming soon to a reality near you, this won’t be the last you hear of digital possessions: big and small.

At this point, digital clothing NFTs are still mostly within closed systems like games. There is digital clothing being created and sold, but the success of digital clothing NFTs is yet to really hit the mainstream. In crypto, we call an opportunity like this: “getting in early”. I’ve said that the biggest opportunity for Metaverse plays won’t be just with Metaverse tokens, but with Metaverse items like land and digital possessions.

With the potential revenue that is projected to come from the NFT fashion space in the future, creators have moved onto blockchain systems like Polygon to create NFTs that aren’t kept within the walled garden of a specific game, and can be exchanged and used on different meterverses and platforms. Dolce and Gabanna have already created clothing NFTs on Polygon, that can be hodled or traded according to what the user wants to do with them. The first dress called Dress From a Dream was designed by Domenica Dolce and Stefano Gabanna themselves, and was auctioned on UNXD.

The target of all this digital asset creation? Well, right now the majority of the retail market is trying to get deeper engagement with ‘GenZ’ consumers: people born after 1997 who have only ever known a web-connected world. There are, of course, fashion and crypto enthusiasts that are buying designer digital clothing releases, but the overall target audience could soon be expanding to people like you and me, especially as digital clothing moves out of the world of instagram and gaming, and onto the Metaverse.

A look into the future shows us that companies like Digitalax are already building a Web3 Fashion Operating system that aims to be a one-stop resource for what to wear in the Metaverse: everything from clothes to shoes and accessories. Even personal items would be created and sold as a metaverse-ready NFT.

We could also see digital fashion for work from home. Zoom backgrounds making our workspaces look more professional? Well, why not digital clothing that makes us look better-dressed than we are in real life? It’s like the “dress shirt with pajama pants” look that got a little too popular in 2020 with so many people working from home: but this time the clothing is digital.

In the Blocktopia metaverse, Kucoin recently built a cyberpunk-themed skyscraper that will serve as the company’s digital office, where users can interact with the workspace and each other using instant voice chat and other features. It’s not a stretch to imagine these future metaverse office workers wearing digital clothing. Everything’s gotta be a step up in the metaverse, so why wouldn’t our clothing reflect the endless possibilities that the metaverse has to offer? Once fashion is created and stored as NFTs, anyone can own a digital wardrobe that they can use in the metaverse and social media apps, and other applications that don’t even exist yet but are on the horizon.

It’s a brave new world out there Bitsquad. Take it from Derek Zoolander, there’s more to life than being really really really ridiculously good looking, and there’s more potential for digital clothing than just instagram modelling and games. This is a new digital market that has all the makings of a box office hit, and we’re looking into this new frontier of crypto before the rocket ship takes off to the moon.

That’s all I got! Be Blessed, Bitboy out.

 

Source: https://thebittimes.com/new-metaverse-paradigm-digital-fashion-and-virtual-clothing-tbt7458.html?utm_source=blogger_source&utm_medium=blogger_medium&utm_campaign=blogger_cam

Category: Cryptocurrency News

Post by: TheBitTimes.com