There are three letters quickly
making their way into the fashion world.
NFTs are the newest way for consumers to own something rare and exclusive,
whether it be artwork, games, fashion, or even land.
Here's the catch,
all of these things only exist in the metaverse,
a concept that even experts are still trying to grasp.
Whether we realize it or not, the metaverse is already all around us.
In a world where everything is at your fingertips.
What happens when what you buy cannot be touched?
Here to help us explain the latest in fashion technology is Sinead Bovell,
expert on all things future and fashion.
My name is Sinead Bovell and I am a futurist,
which means I study the future for a living.
An NFT, which stands for non-fungible token, is a one-of-a-kind, unique
digital asset that represents a real-world object,
like an item in a video game or a digital piece of art.
And the non-fungible part just means no two NFTs are the exact same.
But then there's also individual brands that are creating NFTs in the forms
of digital clothes. For example,
Hermés launched a series of digital baby Birkins, for a small fortune.
Gucci dropped some digital sneakers.
Burberry did an NFT launch with the very popular game Roblox.
Nike recently acquired a virtual sneaker company.
If I can buy
this digital asset and own it and I'm the only one that owns it,
there would be an element of speculation there and hoping that that would
appreciate in value over time.
And if you're into collectibles, this could be a new form of collectible.
But there's also an element of community that can be created.
For example, if Nike launched a series of NFT collectibles,
it might not just be for something that exists in a virtual world.
It could also lead to discount at a physical Nike store.
If you are not necessarily going out into the physical world
and you do most of your engagements online,
you could argue, why buy physical clothes when I could apply a digital outfit?
Let's get some more insight on digital fashion design.
A lot of people think
like the metaverse is something which is coming in the future.
But actually we are living in it.
And when you start in the digital fields, you really explore garments
in a different way.
With the digital software, you can use materials you can normally not
use in the physical world, like glass, water, or even fire.
You can bring lights to your garment.
So with AR, people have more access to like
try on clothes they would never wear in real life.
So you can even explore your identity.
Or even trying out becoming more gender fluid. In the past it was really like
as a fashion designer you had to work for a big company to sell your garments.
Or if you want to work
like independent fashion designer, you need a big budget behind.
But with a metaverse, you even don't need like a big setup.
So this makes it also much more inclusive.
This is also like a new thinking and a new mindset.
The digital
security risks with NFTs are very real.
Especially lately, we're seeing a lot more headlines pertaining to NFT
scams and NFT exists on the blockchain.
So it's not that your NFT is getting hacked.
It's usually the digital wallet or the crypto wallet where you store your NFT.
That platform might get hacked and then you might see your NFT drained.
Or we're
seeing kind of traditional digital scams where you click on a phishing link,
a suspicious email with a link in it, and that leads to draining your NFT wallet.
So that's something that happens in our daily inbox.
And now we're seeing that kind of transferred into the world of NFTs.
And another issue when it comes to security is we're seeing
people auction off NFTs that weren't authorized
to share those digital assets or to share that asset in NFT form.
They weren't the true artist or owner.
You do your research on the seller, you do your research on the platform.
If interesting emails come into your inbox
asking you to click on things, you avoid doing all of that.
You check the Twitter feeds of the platforms where you're housing your NFTs
to see if they've sent any updates
and if they haven't shared something on social media,
you get an email from them that might not be from them.
So you just have to very much do your due diligence at this point in time.
NFTs have quite a damaging carbon footprint,
and we don't realize that the servers we use
to power some of these technologies, whether it's minting and creating an NFT
or simply searching the web and the AI algorithms
that power the social media platforms that you use.
All of that has a real-world carbon footprint.
Can we make this process more sustainable
before we scale it even more?
When it comes to the future
of NFTs in fashion, they will continue to evolve
alongside the digital technologies that we engage with.
So, for example, if a technology like augmented
reality glasses become more mainstream, then what we'll likely see
fashion doing is you'll be able to apply an outfit using your augmented
reality glasses that other people see you in as they walk down the street.
We'll probably see people using augmented reality to attend fashion shows.
We'll probably see NFTs in the form of digital clothes to apply to avatars,
if virtual reality becomes more of a mainstream
place, where we live and where we work and where we play.
So the future of fashion and NFTs, it's also very contingent
on how these kind of platform technologies and digital technologies evolve
and how we evolve with them.