Why Everyone That Loves Fashion Will Have A Crypto Wallet Soon
Fashion innovators, brands and artists are creating marketplaces and NFTs for you personalise your virtual experiences, and the winning platforms will be decentralised.
Eugene Golovanchuk (a.k.a. SKEEVA) is a highly talented 3D digital artist that has done work for big brands like Apple and SpaceX. While scrolling through his instagram page, if you end up really liking his aesthetic, there's a good chance you would follow his page and be interested to know when he might drop something spectacular - not for the Apples or SpaceXs of the world, but for regular admirers like you and me. It would be something I could own - whether it's a unique video I could post and brag about, or a print I could use as my social media profile banner image (or make a large print to hang up in my room), or a 3D asset I could import to use in a social or competitive gaming environment - the metaverse.
I would not be owning a copy of the artwork, I would be getting exclusive ownership of the original, legitimised by the blockchain.
The booming world of the NFT marketplaces has made such experiences increasingly normal, and this is very exciting for both artists that have a following, and people that have artists whose work greatly inspires them. This also means that there will be an increasing number of people opening crypto wallets as we discover the unleashed creativity in the emerging Web 3.0 world.
The Heightened Digital Art Experience
Artists and their audience are finding that the best way to create these personal, heightened experiences is by using the decentralised marketplaces that host NFTs where they make an effort to bid for (or buy) and own exclusive work by artists that they strongly resonate with.
When people find something that they really love, the natural thing to do is to find a way to bring it into one or more of their personal spaces - their walls, into a game they love, in front of their friends and on their bodies (both physical and virtual). It's a way of connecting deeper with the source, and letting the design and art and fashion communicate non-verbally that "this is what I'm about".
Fashion has a big role in virtual environments. Fashion brings aesthetics, style, messaging and branding that contributes greatly in how we choose to present ourselves, and can also greatly affect our mood as we conduct ourselves physically and virtually. In the gaming world, developers know this very well, and they create skins and items for players to purchase with their characters - and it has become a multibillion dollar industry.
When people find something that they really love, the natural thing to do is to find a way to bring it into one or more of their personal spaces - their walls, into a game they love, in front of their friends and on their bodies.
NFTs would serve to greatly further the kind of virtual experiences that is possible. As more and more fashion brands and designers are getting into the nft space, and competing to deliver the freshest and most creative experience, there is a lot to be excited about.
And this brings us to the crypto wallet.
Crypto Wallets
If you shop online, chances are, you carry around the details to your credit card. You had given all our information to a bank during the application, and your economic activity and credit score is forever kept on a ledger to be scrutinised in financial institutions in different situations.
But for online shoppers, that is just the norm, and we don't feel none of that matters too much because it's all worth it if we know it means we can have access to clothing on display in digital storefronts.
That's also the reason why, when it comes to NFTs, plenty of shoppers don't mind the process to set up their crypto wallet, because what it gives access to is a decentralised application where they can connect at a much more personal level to items created by the people that bring an aesthetic or voice they want to connect with by way of ownership.
Crypto Wallets provide access to purchasing not just fabrics, but owning the entire aesthetic.
They are the tools one uses to claim a piece of the creative experiences brands and artists are more frequently creating. Just look at the mobile NFT game that Louis Vuitton is planning to launch.
Alternative Fashion Shopping Experiences
How many fashion stores have you come across that would require you to open a crypto wallet? As of writing this article, my bet is zero to none. That's because fashion dapps (decentralised fashion applications like the one we are building here at Brand New Vision) are only just starting to emerge.
So what does exist?
Alternative digital fashion shopping experiences are always popping up all over the place. For example, Anabel Maldonado created PSYKHE, a website that does a psychology assessment on you to create a very personal shopping experience. Balenciaga and Balmain made their new collections accessible in different kinds of virtual environments.
As I mentioned earlier, these experiences are being created because the one thing that brands need to do to maintain their prestige and mindshare is to constantly stay relevant. That's why fashion is going where the market is telling them to go - into the metaverse, where creativity has virtually no end, and engagement with customers will continue to reach new heights.
They might be starting slow, like how as of this moment, brands like Diamond Supply Co. has the option for shoppers to pay with cryptocurrency. But it's moving faster and faster. Brands are collaborating with platforms to make fresh skins and items we can play with (check out what Burberry is about to do in partnership with Mythical Games). They are making NFTs.
They are supporting the rapid propagation of decentralised shopping marketplaces. For us that love fashion, this simply means that sooner or later, will all have a crypto wallet.
Subscribe to Brand New Vision to know when our next curated fashion items are ready to drop. And get a Metamask or Torus crypto wallet. We are almost there.
Oh, and while waiting, following something like nftcalendar.io is great if you want to know when random interesting drops happen around the world so you can shop before the digital assets are all sold out.