It has been 2 years since c19 started and overdressing to go the supermarket is not a meme anymore.

I bet most of you have a whole-ass wardrobe of clothes and you simply did not have any occasion to wear most of them. Shirt + underwear for Zoom and trikini for the beach are quite trendy at the moment.

Although the above is an interesting topic itself, I would like to focus on digital fashion and bring you up-to-date with the developments in the “fashionverse”.

For those who are unfamiliar, what is digital fashion?

Digital fashion can be many things. It can be digital clothes aka skins in a game. LoL is a prime example of this. Although it has no in-game effects, players might choose to buy skins in order to personalize their characters, show off, and maybe just collect skins, which will eventually go rare.

I know there are many skeptics out there finding this ridiculous, but keep in mind, that if enough people deem something valuable, that thing is valuable. That’s what we call social agreement and the sole reason why diamonds, gold, and bitcoin are worth anything.

NFT Digital Cloth

Second, you can have an NFT digital cloth. This can have a use case or not. Use case in the context of digital fashion can take two forms (1) being able to wear this item on yourself using augmented reality technology (see the figure below) , (2) using it on your avatar in the metaverse, or (3) being able to redeem it irl.

This NFT here, my friends, is sold for 225 wETH over 600,000$ (six hundred thousand). If you visit the Dolce&Gabbana atelier in Milan, you can redeem the physical version as well!

Some Digital clothes work like Snapchat filters, which you pay for. Just like having laser eyes or dog ears you can have a digital cloth overlay on your body in your computer screen as a photo or even real-time, like a video. If it is real-time, then you will be able to move and the clothes you have will move with you, just like the filters. There are ones, which you cannot distinguish from the real clothes. For demonstration purposes, I do not find them very helpful so here you are a loose fit.

This was the Augmented Reality use case of the digital fashion. There is also a virtual reality version of it. This time you buy the clothes and put them on your avatar, photorealistic or stylistic it is up to you. You do not record yourself as you would with Snapchat, but rather, you dress up your digital representation. Very much like Second Life, Sims, Roblox or IMVU.

Solana Pay

• Another topic I want to touch upon is Solana Pay. Think of it like Visa but decentralized and on-chain. So basically instead of using the Visa network, you use the Solana network. And instead of transferring real USD, or any other fiat currency, you transfer USDC, a tokenized version of USD dollar that is 1:1 to backed, or at least this is what we are told. I might write a separate article for Solana Pay but the key takeaway is you can buy some physical garments and the merchant can send you an NFT of them. the opposite of the 600,000$ D&G dress.

• Let that sink in for a moment. So you buy a real pair of Balenciaga sneakers and the merchant will be able to send you the NFT version of it, since they will know your public key on the Solana network, aka your wallet address. Then you can do whatever you want with this NFT. You can prove your ownership of this pair of shoes, in other words, you will have a certificate on the Solana blockchain showing that you bought a pair of sneakers from that merchant. You can wear it in the compatible metaverses. You can show it to some other merchant/artist who is planning to do an airdrop for the holders of that NFT (for people who bought those sneakers). You can organize an exclusive party only for people who owned those sneakers and you can ask them to wear their pair of sneakers. Then the tickets would be just checking their wallet address for the availability of the sneakers NFT.

Final Remarks

Given how much time we spend online, it is inevitable that digital fashion will eat a huge chunk of legacy fashion. I have to say, I am very very positive about digital clothing.

First, it is much more environmentally friendly. Digital garments emit 97% less CO2 compared to physical garments, and on average, it saves 3300 liters of water on average per item. According to dressX digital fashion sustainability report, fashion accounts for 20–35% of microplastic flows in the ocean, 9% of the clothes in the UK is bought for content creation. They have some shocking statistics in that report, I will leave the link description below, be sure to check it out.

Content creation is a prime use case of digital clothing. It makes sense to wear physical garments if you gonna meet someone in irl, but if you are shooting a video why would you need physical garments? After all, you and your clothes get digitized anyhow. If you wear digital in the first place or it gets digitized by the video shooting should not matter that much. If you think but yeah digital clothes will be clunky, in contrast, they look very much sleek. Sometimes I cannot distinguish them if I do not pay close attention.

The second is the supply issue. Luxury brands want to sell as many products as possible but at the same time, they want to keep their brand exclusive. For that reason, you hear Gucci or Louis Vuitton destroying their unsold goods. If the clothes were to come in the digital form these brands could burn the excess clothes with no consequences.

The third thing is customizability and more room for creativity. Physical garments are subject to physical laws. you cannot have a tsunami bra, which is animated and made of water only, or lava boxers. With digital clothing, you are not bound to the rules of physics nor do you need to be a tailor to customize your clothes. You can do whatever changes you want and revert back if you do not like them.

Fourth is durability. Digital clothes, unless coded otherwise, do not wear off. No detergents, no stains, no rips, no tears, best of all no ironing. You can use them for years or easily trade them with others.

Bonus Content

Before finishing today’s article, let me show you the Unisocks. These are basically digital socks, which could also be redeemed for a real pair of socks and can be shipped to anywhere in the world. Max supply is 500 pairs of socks. No more no less. Basically, you buy this token called $SOCKS and you have the option to burn the token and get a real pair of socks. In terms of the price, currently, a pair of socks is trading at above 42 Ether, in layperson terms 110,000$. Unisocks use a dynamic pricing model. This means the first few socks were bought for as low as 12$. Then, the price appreciates with more demand and finds its equilibrium. There is some elegant math behind it but it is out of the scope of this video. So, those who bought the first $SOCKS tokens can sell them back to the Unisocks at a huge profit, unless they had redeemed them for a real pair of socks. I am not sure if there is a secondary market for physical unisocks. lol.

Disclaimer: The author is not affiliated with any of the entities above. The author does not endorse any of the views presented in these articles. This document is not an offer, nor the solicitation of an offer, to buy or sell any of the assets mentioned herein. The views expressed in this post are not, and should not be construed as investment advice or recommendations. This post is intended for informational purposes only.