What the NFT Gold Rush Means for Fashion

The Business of Fashion Podcast

The Business of Fashion

Fashion & Beauty, Business, Arts

4.6 • 770 Ratings

🗓️ 14 May 2021

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The market for digital collectibles is booming, but does it present a real opportunity for brands, or is it just a passing fad?

When a shoe collaboration between design studio RTFKT and digital artist Fewocious netted around $3.1 million earlier this year, the fashion world sat up and paid attention. More than 600 pairs sold out in seven minutes. The shoes were issued as non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, unique digital assets authenticated by a digital ledger known as a blockchain. With appetites for unique virtual assets surging, more fashion companies are looking at how they can tap the market; even Rimowa is launching NFTs. But is this a long-term opportunity or just a passing fad?

In the latest episode of The BoF Podcast, deputy editor Brian Baskin speaks with Benoit Pagotto, co-founder of RTFKT, Karinna Nobbs, co-CEO of NFT marketplace The Dematerialised, Amber Slooten, co-founder and creative director of digital fashion house The Fabricant and editorial associate M.C. Nanda about ways fashion can tap into the NFT gold rush.

Virtual fashion isn’t just about gaming anymore, and that could open up a whole new marketplace for digital skins and on-trend avatars. “Within this new NFT space, people are starting to see the value of digital items,” said Slooten.”You’re able to sort of create that new, endless way of expressing yourself.”
The fashion industry has yet to fully tap into the NFT opportunity, and doing so will mean becoming more open to collaborations. “Nobody [is] sharing anything with each other [in fashion] because they’re afraid it’s going to get stolen,” said Slooten.
Proponents of NFTs say the recent boom is no flash in the pan, but a mark of a paradigm shift. “This is fundamentally going to change digital ownership, creative structures, the creative economy, how we view money even,” said Nobbs. “This is bigger than the Internet.”

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, this is Imran Ahmed founder and CEO of the Business of Fashion.
0:13.4	Welcome to the BOF podcast. It's Friday, May 14th. On today's episode, we discussed the rise of non-fungible tokens or NFTs, which have rapidly taken the world and many creative industries by storm.
0:27.6	The hype is extremely high right now.
0:29.6	I've used the analogy a couple of times that early NFT guys have kind of been presented with the same opportunity as maybe people who found
0:38.1	Bitcoin early. Nobody can predict the future, but the opportunity is huge. And the fashion world
0:43.3	is no exception. We haven't seen, again, a tenth of what digital fashion and NFTs are able to do
0:49.9	going forward in terms of transformation, how they can be programs, reactivity, layered ownership.
0:56.2	There's so much more stuff that's still to come.
0:58.2	I really hope that the fashion industry won't go back to flying all across the world just to watch a fashion show.
1:03.7	For me, going back to the way it was, is no longer an option, right?
1:07.0	We need to look into how we want to create this for the future.
1:10.3	This week, Bof's deputy editor, Brian Baskin, speaks to Benoit Pagoto, co-founder of
1:16.1	Artifact, which recently raised $8 million in funding from Andresen Horowitz,
1:21.6	Karina Nobs, co-CEO of the Dematerialized, Amber Sleuton, co-founder and creative director of the Fabricant, as well as
1:29.8	BOF's editorial associate, M.C. Nanda, about what the NFT gold rush could mean for the fashion
1:36.3	industry and whether all the hype will deliver on the promise that this could be the next
1:41.5	major growth vector for an industry trying to reinvent itself.
1:46.0	First, MC explained the most recent development with NFTs in the fashion industry.
1:51.3	An NFT is a non-fungible token, and that's a unique digital asset that's authenticated and minted using blockchain technology.
2:00.3	So that contains a digital ledger.
2:03.0	That's sort of a record of all transactions. And what's made this space really exciting and,
2:08.3	you know, almost every industry has kind of rushed to the market in part because it's sort of
	...

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