New Codes - Final Book

The contents of this book are a digital narrative told without the boundaries of physical reality.

Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy.

New Codes is the creation and visualisation of a virtual based communication and marketing methodology for streetwear brands within the high end and luxury market levels. Focusing on creating digital assets best suited for each individual brands, whether that be a collection of digital imagery or short form media content for social platforms. New Codes aims to create a methodology that can be applied to multiples brands with different values and stories.

During this book, we will be exploring the different types of presences that different brands within streetwear can have in the metaverse. The two projects within this book will be centered around Palace Skateboards and Yohji Yamamoto, contextualising and visualising their journey’s into the digital future.

The fashion industry is an ever-changing space, with trends coming and going day-by-day, month-by-month, but something that has had a significant and long lasting impact on the industry is that of digital fashion, the world of new realities that are effecting more than just fashion, but all aspects of our lives like how we consume media & news.

This has caused for many brands to take action, throughout all the market levels, to change the way they market and communicate their brand identities and stories. But because of this, we’re seeing some more traditional brands not adapting to a new market and new ways of reaching a new consumer.

Digital fashion is changing every day, advancing and creating newness that makes its way to fashion shows, social media campaigns and mainstream media channels.

Digital fashion us made up of virtual reality, augmented reality and everything in-between, with its home being the ominous Metaverse...

During this process, I have realised that I do not think digital fashion is accessible or made in an accessible way for a more general audience, much of digital fashion is made by pin-point perfection, making sure that every pixel and detail is exactly where it should be and I think this makes digital fashion seem unattainable for most people.

This project aims to create a sense of digital fashion that is curated in the real world, in real world locations that people can consume and understand. As an industry, fashion should be a more inclusive space and by creating a digital world in which people can relate, I believe I promote this.

Something that I believe is crucial for digital fashion to be a success is augmented reality, but why is this?

Augmented reality offers a unique middle ground between the digital and physical realities we live in today, I think this will be important for brands of all levels as well as my chosen brands to interact and create with augmented reality to give their audiences a stepping stone into virtual reality which I think is needed in some cases, and in particular for brands like Yohji Yamamoto who’s fanbase is of a more physical and traditional fashion sense than a Palace audience for example. Brands can use the likes of Instagram and Tiktok to implement these augmented features and give their consumer something new and fresh to consume. It also shows a greater understanding of the digital world to create something within AR oppose to just virtual reality.

Virtual Reality in terms of possibilities is the most exciting aspect of digital fashion, allowing for brand new possibilities and narratives to be told through clothing and items we can’t physically make or even comprehend. Virtual reality offers something more immersive and mind-bending than augmented reality and is see as the logical next step from this. Over the course of 2020 and onwards, we have seen brands and fashion houses use this technology to create catwalk shows, fashion weeks and ways of advertising new collections. This aspect of digital fashion has the most potential to change how we consume fashion as a whole, at all levels and genres.

The consumer for this trend as a whole is Generation Alpha, this is the first truly digital native generation that has spent their complete childhood growing up around smartphones, tablets and TV’s moulding and shaping how the young people around the world perceive the world we live in.

I believe enhancing this experience through digital means, creating a narrative that can be translated into physical reality is important and will help younger people navigate both the digital and physical worlds, in which both have so much to offer in terms of creativity and creations we have never seen before.

During this book, we will be exploring the different types of presences that different brands within streetwear can have in the metaverse. The two projects within this book will be centred around Palace Skateboards and Yohji Yamamoto, contextualising and visualising their journey’s into the digital future.

Palace are a London based streetwear and skateboarding brand, founded in 2009 by Levent Tanju. Palace has risen in popularity using its 90’s culture references, unique collaborations and abrasive attitude. This has helped create an individuality about the brand that sets it apart from other streetwear brands, not just in the UK, but globally. Palace’s identity comes from a careful and precise placement in the UK streetwear market, using their popular and staple ‘TriFerg’ logo we see, that has become an instant brand identifier and any clothing with this logo on sells out on their website within minutes.

Palace have solidified themselves as a staple of UK and global streetwear, so why have I chosen to place them within the metaverse?

I’ve chosen to do this as I believe their target audience in generation Z and future audience in generation Alpha offers a brilliant opportunity for growth and expansion on a digital scale. From research into their target generations, I have found that digital natives are amongst their top audience, with this consumers well-versed in social media, and the digital world as a whole. This digital content would be catered to this audience as I believe creating an inclusive but exclusive collection of digital assets and NFT’s would be a way of broadening their horizons and creating new opportunities. Throughout this section we will see a host of digital fashion items that I believe Palace can promote/ sell and keep their individual identity as well.

These NFT’s will be in the form of different variations of their Tri-Ferg logo’s integrated with some of the styling I’ve done within this project, there are two levels to why I’m constructing them this way. Firstly, the logo adds a collectability aspect and a uniformity to the collection, for example, the Bored Ape NFT’s are all based around Apes which gives them an instantly recognition on the market and you know exactly what they are. The reason for adding styling is purely to bring it back to fashion and the idea that Palace is still a clothing/ skateboard brand.

This collection and this template for the collection is something that could easily be expanded on, creating and enhancing past, present and future designs by the brand themselves or if they end up collaborating with a digital fashion house in the future.

A brand created by well, Yohji Yamamoto himself, is full of oversized dark silhouettes that drape many different fabrics and textures. He’s known for his storytelling and intricate designs that transcend fashion itself, from his perspective, it’s an artform and a self-expression of emotion and his own experience.

Whilst his personal developments are seen as more avant-garde and of a more conceptual level, he also creates for his other brand Y-3. This is a streetwear/ sportswear orientated brand that creates for the everyday functions of life, with the hint of his conceptual side and silhouettes. Y-3 has partnered with Adidas and has staple pieces available on the brands app and website, reaching and promoting to a different type of consumer to his original market.

Yohji has resisted digital fashion and continues to operate in more traditional methods, and whilst I believe this is due to not just his learning and education, but his consumer as well. I believe Yohji has an incredible opportunity to create new narratives and extend on the stories he’s already telling through the metaverse and what it has to offer. To promote and create for this new age consumer within generation Alpha, moving forward within this project I will be creating short fashion film clips for social medias as well as creating NFT’s and augmented reality assets that extrapolate on his narrative.

This shows a frame by frame of the animated NFT content I’ve made for Yohji because his storytelling goes beyond still images and I believe the best way to capture this is by creating art pieces that come alive, move and show more than what we first see.

This following section is about Wonderman Studios, my professional industry facing Instagram portfolio.

This section will go over the finalised imagery and videos I’ve posted including my fashion NFT’s, my branded imagery and video content that both shows off and displays my video creation and editing skills. You can see the Instagram account itself and how it is laid out in terms of symmetry and creating a branded and aesthetically pleasing layout for potential clients to see as they peruse my content.

This is a short and sweet introduction to some flat imagery that people can expect from myself at Wonderman Studios and is slightly easier to consume than some of the more digitally intense content on the page.

These are images taken from my Instagram showing the different sections of my work. The thought behind this was to find the most effective way of showing this content and making it intrusive and abrasive as I think this attracts someone’s attention in a different way. One of my first posts is an about, showing what Wonderman Studios is about and a brief mission statement so to speak for what exactly the page and I do in the industry, using a very well, self-explanatory, title for people to click on and understand what they’re reading straight away. On these posts there are the NFT’s I’ve created from each respective brand and I have used these front pages to describe the post quickly to adhere to generation Alpha’s shorter attention span and using a keyword like NFT, I think this does just that.

These videos are a display of different digital skills that show what is within the realms of possibility with Wonderman studios and further reinforce the idea of multi-media content. Something that is evident within today’s society and social media platforms, is the amount of different platforms that are optimized, so Tiktok, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter all have different formats that need to be adhered to and this can be seen in these videos, as I visualise and show different dimensions during these.

During these videos I show the different ranges of green screen technology and how it can be used, this is evident through showing the models in location and within a digital setting that I have created. As this project has progressed, so has the level of quality and level of intricacy within my work, I have shown a clear development that I think is evidenced in this final batch of video content. Throughout this development I’ve shown my gap in the market for more relatable and organic digital fashion and what this could look like within the streetwear market sector especially.