Hi, I'm Ben.
You know me from crypto.
But I share some similarity to another Ben you might recognize,
Ben Stiller in his character Derek in the movie Zoolander.
No, I'm not a male model.
Yet.
And I'm not creating a center for kids who can't read good
and want to learn to do other stuff good too.
What is this?
A center for ants?!
I am, however, a bit of a man of fashion.
I like to think I bring my own style to the crypto space.
And with the introduction of the metaverse to a larger audience,
we're seeing style emerged into crypto like we've never seen before.
What started with designer game skins and a few digital clothing auctions
has now become a budding NFT sector that is set to make waves in the metaverse.
Are we going to see virtual clothing for people like you and me
hit the mainstage of crypto anytime soon?
Well, let's give this fashion moment our best Blue Steel
and dive into the expanding world of digital clothing.
Let's get it!
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My name is Ben.
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In this video, we look at digital clothing and what it might mean for the metaverse.
What is digital clothing? And how does it fit into the metaverse?
Well, instead of fabric,
they're pixels created using 3D software.
Digital clothing retailers are making fashion that is mapped to your body.
Using the same technology you see in filters on Snapchat,
they can turn your face into a piece of pizza.
No pineapple, please.
But who is this digital clothing for?
Fashion-forward buyers purchase digital clothing without ever touching them.
And right now the market is relatively small and made up of Instagram influencers
and digital clothing collectors.
These digital pieces can be easily added or removed from a picture,
bringing a whole catalogue of different looks without ever having to do a wardrobe change.
There's no need to store or care for physical clothing.
And the digital clothes can be kept in the user's portfolio or sold on an NFT marketplace.
Think of gaming skins brought into the real world.
The average person can change their entire wardrobe with just the click of a button
like changing the look of a gaming avatar.
There are several brands pioneering this trend including Tribute,
a Croatian company that focuses on materials that people could never wear in the real world,
The Fabricant,
a Dutch-owned company that designed the first piece of digital couture,
and RTFKT,
a company that, in five minutes, sold $3.1 million in digital shoes.
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What do you think of digital clothing?
Is it all the rage or fashion faux pas?
Fashion brands are using the power of digital clothing in a few key ways.
They're capitalizing on the idea of limited editions,
allowing customers to see value in purchasing an item of digital clothing because of its rarity.
It can also be used as a social token,
where creators, musicians and athletes can connect with their fans through unique designs.
I can imagine people going to a concert or a game
and posting a picture wearing a limited edition piece of digital clothes.
Since they're blockchain-based,
each clothing NFT can represent a piece of media like art, videos and music,
making the NFT more engaging.
There would be endless applications in the metaverse for digital clothing,
office wear, streetwear, and even clothes to wear in the metaverse nightlife.
What about eSports?
Well, we've only seen the beginning of fashion skins for video game avatars.
It's an incredibly popular income stream for gaming platforms.
I can only see that accelerating from here.
The first time we saw a digital clothing was by Scandinavian retailer Carlings back in 2018.
The collection sold for peanuts compared to today's NFT pricing standards
because what would soon be called a digital collectible was still a very new idea.
19 pieces from the Neo-Ex collection sold for about $10 each.
And once purchased,
the digital clothing item was tailored to a photo of the buyer,
ready to post on social media.
This was around the beginning of the Instagram model culture that we see now.
Since then, NFTs, social media and how we interact online changed a lot.
And with the metaverse becoming less virtual and more reality over time,
you can only expect more changes in the future.
In May 2019, CryptoKitties and The Fabricant,
a Dutch fashion house that aims to lead the way toward a new sector of digital clothing,
collaborated to create the first ever digital couture.
The piece called the Iridescence was sold at a charity auction for $9,500
on the Ethereum blockchain.
The sale price shows how far NFTs have come in two short years.
At the time, the sale was head-scratching news for some
because they wondered how something that only exists in the digital world
could be worth so much money.
Fast forward a few months, the NFT boom in 2021,
where we see JPEGs being sold for thousands, hundreds of thousands and even millions,
and online clothes are starting to follow in those footsteps.
Recently, digital fashion startup DressX partnered with Crypto.com
to release a collection of physical and NFT clothing pieces that sold for 1,855 ETH.
The equivalent? $5.7 million.
The digital clothing pieces in the collection included three embroidered men's jackets,
The Impossible Tiara made of gems that can't be found on earth,
and The Doge Crown with seven blue sapphires and 142 diamonds.
Luxury brands see the potential.
And now they're hopping aboard the digital clothing train
with a focus on gaming.
Balenciaga and Burberry released a series of skins
for the characters in Honor of Kings, Fortnite and Blankos Block Party.
Gaming skins are a profitable business.
And it's only growing.
Back in May, Epic Games revealed it made $50 million from just one set of Fortnite skins.
Insane!
Puma has inked deals with gaming groups like the League of Legends.
Gen.G Esports squad of players will be wearing digital Puma jerseys.
Valentino, Marc Jacobs and Anna Sui released skins for Animal Crossing this year.
And Givenchy and Gillete Venus created digital items that cater to players' in-game beauty needs.
Shocked by the idea of in-game beauty items?
Don't be.
With the metaverse coming soon to reality near you,
this won't be the last you hear of digital possessions,
big and small.
At this point, digital clothing NFTs are still mostly within closed systems like games.
There's digital clothing being created and sold,
but the success of digital clothing NFTs is yet to really hit the mainstream.
In crypto, we call an opportunity like this getting in early.
I've said that the biggest opportunity for metaverse plays
won't be just with metaverse tokens
but with metaverse items like land and digital possessions.
With the potential revenue that is projected to come from the NFT fashion space in the future,
creators have moved on to blockchain systems like Polygon to create NFTs
that aren't kept within the walled garden of a specific game.
It can be exchanged and used on different metaverses and platforms.
Dolce & Gabbana have already created clothing NFTs on Polygon
that can be HODLed or traded according to what the user wants to do with them.
The first dress called Dress from a Dream was designed by Domenico Dolce
and Stefano Gabbana themselves.
It was auctioned on UNXD.
The target of all this digital asset creation?
Well, right now, the majority of the retail market is trying to get deeper engagement
with Gen Z consumers,
people born after 1997 who've only known a web-connected world.
There are, of course, fashion and crypto enthusiasts that are buying designer digital clothing releases,
but the overall target audience could soon be expanding to people like you and me,
especially as digital clothing moves out of the world of Instagram and gaming
and onto the metaverse.
A look into the future shows us that companies like DIGITALAX
are already building a Web3 fashion operating system
that aims to be a one-stop resource for what we wear in the metaverse.
Everything from clothes to shoes and accessories,
even personal items would be created and sold as a metaverse-ready NFT.
We can also see digital fashion for work from home,
zoom backgrounds making our workspaces look more professional.
Well, why not digital clothing that makes us look better dressed than we are in real life?
It's like the dress shirt with pajama pants look that got a little too popular in 2020
with so many people working from home.
At least you're wearing pants.
But this time, the clothing is digital.
In the Bloktopia metaverse,
KuCoin recently built a cyberpunk-themed skyscraper that will serve as the company's digital office
where users can interact with the workspace and each other using instant voice chat
and other features.
It's not a stretch to imagine these future metaverse office workers wearing digital clothing.
Everything's got to be a step up in the metaverse.
So why wouldn't our clothing reflect the endless possibilities that the metaverse has to offer?
Once fashion is created and stored as NFTs,
anyone can own a digital wardrobe that they can use in the metaverse and social media apps
and other applications that don't even exist yet but are on the horizon.
It's a brave new world out there, BitSquad.
Take it from Derek Zoolander.
There's more to life than being really, really, really, really, really, really ridiculously good looking.
There's more potential for digital clothing than just Instagram modeling and games.
This is a new digital market that has all the makings of a box office hit.
And we're looking into this new frontier of crypto before the rocket ship takes off to the moon.
That's all I got.
Be blessed.
BitBoy out.