Digital Fashion: Where the Metaverse and NFTs Meet

The rapid development of mixed reality (mixed reality) and web3.0 technology,With the traditional industries represented by games and fashion, it has laid a solid foundation for many virtual worlds with flesh and blood, laughter and tears.

Over the past 20 years, the rapid development of technology and entertainment media has changed every aspect of society. but inbecause

becausePeople's demand for self-expression in the virtual world is getting stronger and stronger, and virtual identity (digital representation) becomes more and more important.In the gaming industry, this trend is already evident. For example, "Fortress Night" had a revenue of 2.4 billion US dollars in 2018, and light skin accounted for 59.8% of the revenue. Annual sales of virtual items exceed $50 billion and continue to climb each year.

On a deeper level, the fashion industry has been an industry related to individual self-expression since ancient times; of course, everyone has a strong desire for self-expression, and the scale of the industry has reached 3 trillion US dollars if you are not careful.As the application of 3D technology becomes more mature and the scale is larger, the fashion industry will further step into and embrace these digital technology fields.

Digital fashion is not a new concept. It has been wandering around the edge of the industry before, frantically exploring. Let’s take a look at what players in the virtual fashion industry have tried:

The turbulent 2020 has undoubtedly accelerated this wave. Traditional industries that depend on physical presence for revenue have been hit hard by the cancellation of events due to the pandemic. They have to find another way to go online to meet consumer demand. The top fashion houses are no exception. Despite their deep pockets, fashion weeks and events have been canceled and their performance has plummeted. They also have to explore mixed reality technology to let themselves breathe. Balenciaga's Fall 2021 fashion show "Post-World: The Age of Tomorrow" is all about gaming.

In this article, we will take you throughHow the world's largest luxury brand, brand incubator, and technology company platform lead the trend of "virtual fashion" / "virtual + reality fashion".

The Fabricant is a unique digital fashion company that paved the way for purely digital clothing.Using intensely photorealistic photography, 3D design and animation, The Fabricant produces both clothing and experiences at the intersection of technology and fashion, where the Emperor's New Clothes is no longer a fairytale.

The Fabricant wants to drastically reduce the environmental impact of the fashion industry through an "always digital, never real" approach. According to a study in collaboration with Imperial College London,The traditional fashion production process devours many resources:

• From design to processing, the process of producing a T-shirt produces 7.8 kilograms of carbon dioxide, while a pure digital T-shirt only has 0.26 kilograms of carbon emissions, compared with a reduction of carbon emissions by more than 97%.

• During the life cycle of a T-shirt, processes such as washing, printing and dyeing consume 683 liters of water, while a purely digital product skips these steps entirely.

• In the design and production stages of traditional clothing, the environmental pollution waste caused by the use of chemicals reached 12,300 kilograms, while digital products only produced 0.692 kilograms.

• Brands can reduce their carbon footprint by 30% when virtual digital samples replace actual garment samples during the design and development phase, a step closer to sustainability goals.

Although digital samples are the most straightforward practice, the ultimate vision of digital fashion is to make clothing completely digital, and mixed reality technology can make this vision possible. When buying digital clothing, customers will also use AR filters such as Snapchat and Instagram. In other words, when you take pictures and videos with these apps, you can see yourself wearing this digital clothing.

In addition, CGI animation (highly realistic computer-generated animation) can be used to embed the clothes consumers buy into their photos and videos. The most exciting thing is that the image in VR can also wear this purely digital clothing.While adding new clothes to yourself, you can also add a new skin to your game image.

The FabricantBlockchain technology entered the market very early. In 2019, they andCryptoKitties（Obsessed with cats, a crowd-cloud cat game on Ethereum) andNBA Top Shot(Players can collect NBA "wonderful moments" on this, just like the usual collection of NBA star cards) The famous chain game development teamDapper LabsCooperation, made an NFT, which is the first digital clothing "Iridescence" that can be sold on the blockchain. Their creative director Amber Jae Slooten wrote:

The Fabricant focuses on "phygital" experiences, that is, the realm where the physical and the digital combine.Most recently, The Fabricant partnered with Hong Kong luxury retailer IT, which has been at the helm of China's fashion industry for more than three decades. For this collaboration, The Fabricant was commissioned by IT to digitally recreate a range of garments.

As part of the collaboration, IT established a "window pop-up boutique" featuring zero-physical clothing. Using AR technology, customers can try on the clothes in a pop-up window such as a website and place an order through the app.

MetaFactory stands at the intersection of community, culture and finance.It is a bridge that connects online experiences, virtual identities and the real world through unique apparel and brand experiences designed, curated and owned by the community.

MetaFactory is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that crowdfunds to create digital fashion brands that are owned by the community. We can understand MetaFactory as a cultural engine, which abstracts traditional logistics and logistics, saves these steps, and promotes the development of new products.Let creators focus on doing their craft wholeheartedly without considering other factors when facing innovation, implementation, sales and logistical support in DAO.

MetaFactory uses a governance token ($ROBOT) to manage partnerships, platform features, community finances, and more. $ROBOT is the financial engine of the ecosystem, it is used to pay creators, reward buyers with a cash back program (currently 42% of every purchase is returned), and curate the entire marketplace.

MetaFactory is also exploring a curation mining program, a cryptoeconomic version of a vote of faith(conviction voting, voters continue to express their preferences and vote tokens on proposals they hope to approve. As the voting time goes on, their beliefs and weights in their votes are also growing until it reaches a proposal. According to the algorithmic setting of the required fund ratio, the proposal will be passed, the fund will be released, and the project can start).In MetaFactory's own words, the plan would be something like this:

This novel approach allows the community to control the product pipeline while generating a culture from the bottom up.

MetaFactory has achieved some notable results on other crypto projects, such as $YFI (asset management), $SUSHI (exchange), $MEME (crypto art), $YAM (asset management), MetaGame, and more. As you can see from these results, there is a strong desire to connect with communities interested in branded apparel and merchandising.

RTFKT combines the three technologies of AR, blockchain and game engine to create sneakers and other gadgets in Metaverse.

Although the team has been quietly cooperating with game designers and fashion brands for several years before this, RTFKT was officially established in January 2020. Now, it has developed into a full-fledged virtual fashion brand, generating millions of dollars in revenue, and has locked in and FEWOCiOUS (an 18-year-old artist selected by encrypted art explosion machine Nifty Gateway to design for Musk) sci-fi shoes), Atari and AI rapper Meka and other cooperation.

When RTFKT designed digital wearable NFTs, they hoped that they could interact in virtual worlds such as Decentraland, Cryptovoxels, and Sandbox (these are the three major virtual worlds on the chain).In addition, these NFTs also come with AR filters for Snapchat, Instagram and other apps, just like The Fabricant mentioned earlier, allowing customers to see themselves wearing NFTs through these apps. They also work with the game engine so that the characters in the game can also wear these skins.

Of course, RTFKT is best known for their sneaker designs. They collaborated with FEWOCiOUS, leading digital art and NFT culture - their three joint shoes sold 3.1 million US dollars within 7 minutes of going online.Consumers can use Snapchat to virtually try on shoes before buying, and each pair of shoes they buy can be redeemed in the real world.

After the sneakers were launched, HypeBeast quoted the founder of RTFKT:

DIGITALAX aims to solve such challenges by establishing distribution channels and content supply chains in the Ethereum network. in other words,DIGITALAX hopes to become Metaverse's Digital Fashion Operating System (Digital Fashion Operating System, DFOS).

DIGITALAX's Digital Fashion Operating System (DFOS) has 3 layers：

(1) Digital content supply chain that can be verified and traced

for example,

for example,Creators can create materials, patterns, textures and other elements of digital goods as a sub-ERC-1155 NFT, and then charge for the use of each element in the modular design, and finally make themselves profitable.

(2) File format logic

As mentioned above, one of the biggest challenges that applications face when compatibilizing information is file format differences. For example, an object rendered in a high-fidelity environment may not work in a lower-quality environment.The running process of DFOS is conceptually similar to wETH(wrapped ETH, can be directly traded with other tokens, can be converted 1:1 with ETH, wETH complies with the ERC-20 standard)Similarly, 3D files can be converted between different modeling environments, animation or game engines.

(3) Digital economy ecosystem

This layer is the culture medium and birthplace for the formation of the digital economy. DFOS does not adopt a top-down approach, but completes the program development through the developer's survey of users, trying to bridge the market into a more integrated system.

Players push designers to create content, and designers, through developers, integrate it into the game.Because developers don't have to spend time developing DLC ​​(Downloadable Content) for the player's image in digital fashion, they can focus on the virtual world itself and create a better experience.

Designers can quickly respond to players' needs through modular NFTs, and brands can also ship digital works directly to players without being troubled by compatibility issues. Of course, the most important thing is that players can use only one digital identity to express themselves in various virtual universes that are compatible and intertwined.

The entire DFOS uses the ERC-20 token ($MONA) as a transfer fee and also as a measure of value creation. For example, game designers can integrate tokens as in-game currency or rewards.

Interestingly, DIGITALAX is also building an esports platform called ESPA.The ESPA platform brings together developers, modders, designers and casual players to create a play-to-earn experience around virtual fashion. The gamification of wearable devices will be a very interesting thing.

Blockchain technology can verify the authenticity of goods - something that has been difficult in the fashion industry in the past.In addition to verifying the authenticity of goods, encrypted assets can also truly bring the fashion industry online, allowing digital clothing to be worn directly on game characters, creating a unique revenue model.

Although it is still too early for these technologies and cultures to fully satisfy our experience, it is not difficult to imagine such a future coming. Like the companies above,Fashion companies that embrace this trend will position themselves as "Fashion 3.0".

As you may have learned by now,The fusion of various technologies is accelerating the process of the emergence of the Metaverse. This process requires that human beings can express themselves - and what better way than fashion?Fortunately, mixed reality technology opens up a whole new world of possibilities.

If it were you, which clothes would you choose to wear?