Gamers, NFT investors, as well as major fashion businesses, are becoming more and more interested in virtual clothing.
The metaverse, or shared virtual settings, has seen tremendous attention as a result of the epidemic. It alludes to shared virtual worlds where property, structures, avatars, and even names can be purchased and traded, frequently with the use of cryptocurrencies. There is now a market for digital clothing such as NFT wearables. While many find it absurd to spend real money on apparel that doesn’t exist in the actual world, virtual goods drive genuine commerce in the metaverse.
When the online community Decentraland announced in June that members could create and sell their own apparel for avatars to wear there, digital artist Hiroto Kai created outfits with Japanese influences. He said that in just three weeks, selling kimonos for about $140 apiece (about Rs. 9,800), he had made between $15 and $20 (roughly Rs. 10,50,000 and Rs. 14,00,000). The 23-year-old left his job after earning what he would have made in a year working at a music store in just three weeks as a full-time designer. It is challenging to estimate the market’s entire size for NFT wearables. According to a website that monitors the NFT market, wearable sales volume in Decentraland alone increased from Rs2 crore in the same period last year to around Rs5 crore in the first half of 2021. Shopping online may be the way of the future, according to some supporters. When buying for yourself or for your online avatar, Julia Schwartz, director of a virtual real estate investment vehicle, argues that exploring a virtual area might provide a more immersive brand experience than skimming through a feed. For fans of NFT, online shopping does not take the place of actual retail transactions. However, the co-founders of the digital fashion start-up, Paula Sello and Alissa Aulbekova, assert that it might be a more sustainable option than rapid fashion brands. Customers can upload a photo of themselves to the brand to have digital apparel created for them. Sello stated that the idea of a virtual garment could reduce the amount of money wasted by customers purchasing clothing for social media use. Some of the biggest fashion brands in the world are paying attention to the niche crypto assets because they want to be associated with a new generation of gamers. Large fashion labels have made investments in NFTs over the past few months. While others offered wearables for sale to gaming platforms, one of them introduced metaverse games where players could gather NFTs. NFT collectors and fans can now have their own digital closet that is exclusive as well as fashionable thanks to a recent partnership between DressX, a digital fashion platform, and an NFT trading platform. Ansh Kumar, an augmented reality artist, says of the NFT surge in art, music, and now fashion that it provides a method for him to monetize his creations. It’s wonderful to see that digital art has evolved beyond being only something to publish on social media and is now considered valid. The biggest fashion brands are developing a market for customers to interact with their items through Metaverse. People purchase NFTs because they anticipate a large demand for them in the upcoming years. According to Brooklyn-based digital artist Ravi Guru Singh, who collaborated with Madrid-based 3D fashion designer Lorena Bello to produce traditional Indian fashion NFTs, India is still largely untapped, particularly in the fashion industry. In addition to the existing well-known fashion businesses, additional newcomers will enter the market as metaverses become increasingly popular, he says.
The pair used technology to combine cultural traditions with fashion to create the first ever Indian digital collection in the fashion industry. Ravi predicts that as the South Asian industry develops, genuine investments will be made in the booming NFT market. He says that although the NFT fashion industry is still getting off the ground, it has the potential to build “an anarchist utopia.” At the recently finished Met-Gala, a gathering including a variety of digital fashion NFTs, Ravi auctioned off his first-ever wearable NFT with a Bollywood theme, the “Bollywood meta suit,” for $3600 (about Rs 3 lakh).
