New Realities

Let’s bring this back to fashion real quick…

Brands like Nike and Adidas have had a massive impact on how we as a fashion industry are viewing this trend, as I believe these brands wouldn’t have invested in buying digital creative studios and collaborating with NFT companies if they didn’t believe this was here to stay. For example, Nike bought RTFKT studios and this was the statement that Nike made during this purchase…

“NIKE, Inc. today announced the acquisition of RTFKT, a leading brand that leverages cutting edge innovation to deliver next generation collectibles that merge culture and gaming.” (Nike, 2021).

Wider evidence of the investment towards cryptocurrency and the Metaverse in general is Facebook, should I say ‘Meta’. Facebook has officially changed it’s name as of the 1st December 2021.Whilst this move was seemingly more materialistic than business orientated, it shows an intention and a preview as to what’s to come. Adidas have taken a different approach to the digital fashion world with a collaboration with one of the biggest NFT creators in the world, Bored Ape Yacht Club. This brand is the one that we’re probably most familiar with in terms of popularity as they have the iconic Ape avatars taking spotlight in their NFT designs.

“It’s a flip of the normal business model where we make stuff and hope people will buy it,” says Adidas senior director of digital growth Tareq Nazlawy. “You’re not just buying the product. You’re becoming a member of this community.” (D & Chitrakon, 2021)

On the left page, you can see a mixture of different NFTs/ digital fashion assets...

From top to bottom, we have the adidas collaboration, the team that worked on it and a Bored Ape NFT image in the top right. The sneakers beneath show an example of Nike’s collaboration with RTFKT on pairs of futuristic sneakers as well as classic silhuoettes like the Nike Dunks.

The row of images at the bottom show 4 different Bored Ape NFT’s and what they can look like....

After this research, looking at the different angles in which digital fashion is going, I think digital fashion needs to be more human and needs to be more relatable to us as not just creatives but human beings. But what do I mean by this? Further research into the digital fashion houses like ‘The Fabricant’ and ‘Clo3D’ shows a perfection, a finish and polish that doesn’t show a realness or an organic outcome, and I think this has a tendency to alienate people who don’t understand the concept of it straight away. The images on the previous pages shows a couple of images from both The Fabricant (top three images) and a 3D modelling program Clo3D (bottom half images), these are some examples of the polished and over perfected work which I think is quite hard to comprehend for non-digital natives.

A big part of my thinking is not just creating a new and exciting aspect to digital fashion, but to create an inclusive space that helps people and brands navigate their way into the metaverse. Moving forward, I’m very aware of what my digital content will look like, in terms of creating something that is digestible for multiple people and generations, whilst focusing on the younger consumer in Generation Alpha. But one of the ways you capture a younger generation, coming from experience is through their older siblings and parents. I believe this because I was influenced by video games my older cousins played that I didn’t have access to or films that I didn’t have access to, in terms of age rating or money wise.

“When you look at GTA IV in the broader sense, it was more interested in immersing players into the atmosphere of Liberty City. With a larger cast of characters, along with several new systems to learn while exploring a more dense city, the new setting offered the most dynamic space in a GTA game at the time.”

A quote taken from a new article looking GTA IV and whether it has stood the test of time. (Fillari, 2018)

Examples of this would be Grand Theft Auto IV, a game that had a big virtual world full of different aspects, people and assets. One of the reasons I was so into these was the immersive in to a new and fictional world we couldn’t experience anywhere else, but going back to my first point, this game wasn’t made for my demographic as I was only 9 years old when it was released and wouldn’t have played it if I hadn’t heard or seen the older people in my life playing and experiencing it.