Can NFTs be the future of fashion?

In October 2021, Dolce & Gabbana generated $6.1 million in sales, through NFT (Non-Fungible tokens, a form of uniquely certified artwork) collections. Through different objects and experiences, fashion brands are now starting to open up to the latest digital movement – Rebecca Minkoff and Vuitton have already started creating NFTs, with arguable success. With NFTs, no need to wonder whether the organic cotton of your latest shirt really is organic, or whether your skirt has been created in terrible working conditions. No need to get that pair of jeans from a second hand shop - its fabrication did not require thousands of litres of water. So why shouldn’t fashion brands jump on the bandwagon?

It seems that an industry based on the use of clothing through wearing could never flourish online. But the users have found a new way to make fashion – online, they can swap their couture gowns for other goods. Some digital couture houses, like The Fabricant, are already creating £9500 dresses with the mention “Couture”. Now that’s enough to make the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture Parisienne shake to its core, you tell me, but if there is a real desire from consumers to obtain NFT Fashion, why shouldn’t brands take advantage of it?

No fittings, no need to scratch your head for hours over tax duties and shipping costs. That’s what drove brands to start jumping on the digital fashion wagon. You may already know that Vuitton had created skins for Fortnite, and that Balenciaga made up its own video game. Joining the digital virtual world seems like a path many Fashion houses choose to take - and with customers growing hungrier than ever for these online exceptional pieces, it seems like the market is about to change.

Could NFTs be the solution to the waste generated by the industry? Well, not really. If creating a pair of jeans sucks out a lot of the fresh water on earth, producing an NFT requires a level of complicated technology. Its energetic cost would be the equivalent of driving 838 thousand kms with a petrol car. And if that image still doesn’t make a lot of sense, in plain words, it means that it pollutes a lot. 

So why so much interest? Right now, it seems that the general population is realising the importance of investing online, which only makes the stocks more valuable. But since investing in bitcoin seems a little late, you might want to invest in art - online art. That also means that the value of these art pieces are closely related to how interested one might be in this digital creation - meaning its value could very well fall to 0 once we start living normally again and stop spending most of our lives indoors.

Creatively, NFTs make sense - there is no real limit to what can be designed digitally. No limited stocks of fabrics, no cut too technical… If you’re designing for a Metaverse (a virtual gaming world), then you’d also have to bother with how the garments move, and how they will evolve in the said metaverse. It’s a completely new universe, guaranteed to fulfill a young designer’s dream – and many of them have already understood the issue. Artists are also working with what is now being called a “digital twin” set, where the buyer would get the NFT garment as well as a real life version of it.

But what about the customer experience? The story? Understanding fashion history and knowing how to tell a story through a collection is a key element of becoming a great designer. Virtual or tangible, the clothes must have some kind of garment construction that makes sense. That would be the struggle for many young NFT fashion designers at the moment – creating exquisite garments requires a good enough knowledge of the gaming scene, the internet’s fashion demands, as well as software skills (that crinoline is not going to code itself). That being said, the possibilities are endless and the fashion codes are much looser than they are in the physical world - so my guess is these designers have many beautiful adventures ahead of them.