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Fashion has been part of our civilisation and culture for centuries – and it’s safe to say it’s reached the apex of its technological evolution, right?
Not quite. Fashion-tech and the evolving luxury goods market have embraced plenty of NFT projects and metaverse concepts – yet the dawn of a more mainstream blockchain fashion industry may soon be upon us.
Indeed, while the likes of an NFT digital twin of a high end clothing purchase in our physical reality can create a compelling new piece of clothing content in the metaverse, for example, fashion-tech is not satisfied in simply using these blockchain breakthroughs for bragging rights.
As we will explore today, there is just as much excitement surrounding how the blockchain and the metaverse can play a greater role in defining, communicating and ultimately upgrading fashion-tech and smart tag concepts like ethics, transparency, traceability and supply chain guarantees.
In a world in which change is the only constant, there are plenty of exciting blockchain fashion-tech breakthroughs in the pipeline. Today, we’ll be diving into some of the most compelling and creative uses for smart tag fashion, the metaverse and everything in between.
Fashion-tech is far from sci-fi
When people think of fashion-tech, chances are they can’t help but imagine wrist-worn holographic wearables, glasses that deliver stats and brand names in augmented reality, or simply clothing with neon and holographic motifs.
Yet the future of fashion is less Blade Runner and Cyberpunk 2077 – and more grounded in bringing fashion forward into an era in which the blockchain and the metaverse are a part of everyday life.
When exploring how fashion companies and the customers wearing the clothing are using blockchain solutions, keep in mind that many of the use cases are not as outlandish or romantic as valuable NFT virtual items – yet are no less vital to encouraging concepts such as sustainability, combating crime and increasing the power of ownership inherent to everyone in the value chain.
The fashion industry worldwide is worth about a trillion dollars – that’s a lot of capital ready to move towards innovations and breakthroughs like those promised by blockchain technologies.
Fashion-tech is an ever emergent market, yet one whose promise and potential are backed by well established businesses with deep pockets and grand ideas.
Are there going to be mistakes and missteps as the world adapts to the new frontiers of the metaverse and blockchain smart tag technology? Of course.
But will there also be revolutionary new ways of creating more ethical, egalitarian and ecologically sound fashion-tech breakthroughs – that helps us all look great while saving the world?
Absolutely.
Helping clothing combat crime via the blockchain
By the very nature of the technology, the blockchain is entirely traceable. After all, the nature of its coding and structure is such that it’s a list of transactions and events that is locked in an immutable state, impossible to reverse or alter, as further blocks are added to its chain.
Just as cryptocurrencies enjoy far greater traceability and transparency thanks to blockchain technology than even their fiat currency counterparts – despite what any ill-informed headlines might tell you – blockchain fashion-tech can play a pivotal role in eliminating crime from the fashion and garment industries.
How and why? Complex questions, but let’s start with the most immediate and perhaps most threatening multi billion dollar industry – counterfeiting.
People want to look good – if they didn’t, we wouldn’t have a fashion industry. Yet many of the world’s biggest and most desirable brand names release their products for a premium, and for many customers, the idea of getting their hands on such appealing apparel at a price below the norm is too good a deal to pass up.
Naturally, a brand with a solid reputation and ethical backing has every right to charge as it pleases for its products – that’s simply business. The sticking point comes into play where counterfeiting is concerned – and keep in mind that most customers who buy fake brand name products don’t know they are doing so.
The rise of ecommerce has made counterfeiting an incredibly lucrative business for criminal organisations, with a remarkably low cost of entry as far as investing in equipment and infrastructure is concerned.
It’s no longer an industry about selling knock-off goods on street corners or at flea markets either. The logistics supply chains of leading ecommerce platforms are now so tangled into ribbons that thousands of counterfeit goods get listed with impunity on leading marketplaces every day.
Ecommerce giants are either too big or too indifferent to tackle the problem, often simply shrugging and mumbling excuses to the effect of ‘caveat emptor’. Understandably, for both customers and fashion brands, that solution just isn’t good enough – barely a solution at all.
Bring fashion-tech and the blockchain into play, however, and the landscape radically changes. The way the blockchain works means that anyone, from a casual user to a clothing supplier or retail outlet, can enjoy full traceability of a given garment’s journey.
Anything that seems out of the ordinary is a sure sign of foul play, and goods can be refused and sourced elsewhere accordingly.
This traceability plays a powerful role in fashion’s need to commit to better ethics, too. If the blockchain demonstrates to retailers that clothing has come from places and production facilities where bad work environments and illegal practices are known to occur, the entire industry can vote with their wallets to turn down the goods en masse – leaving such despicable enterprises little choice but to shutter their shops up and turn to more honest means of making their living.
Shoring up sustainability with blockchain fashion-tech
In tandem with many of the more legally grounded methods by which fashion-tech is employing the blockchain to safeguard workers’ rights, supply chain integrity and brand authenticity, this level of traceability also does a great deal to enhance both companies’ and customers’ concerns surrounding ecologically friendly business practices.
The discourse surrounding environmentalism and the fashion industry has hit fever pitch, and consumers are categorically not interested in any greenwashing that isn’t backed by legitimate and researchable data.
When using the blockchain as part of their supply chain processes, fashion brands are able to immutably register their clean and green credentials for all to see. Brands who practice what they preach and commit to full accountability for a more environmentally sound means of garment production can put their money where their mouth is – indeed, a buyer could trace the very shirt they’re wearing right back to the exact field in which its cotton was grown if it gave them more peace of mind.
The sense of pride and ownership inherent to so much of how blockchain technology operates also hands a far fairer deal to the people who put the time in to create our clothing overall. Each garment to which they’ve contributed can have a smart contract or signature locked into the block on the chain at the point of production – like a stamp of personalisation or approval.
That isn’t just so one can idle away an evening looking at the diaspora of one’s handiwork around the world on spreadsheets or the like, of course – it’s also a proven and demonstrable mark of work well done.
As CVs and other employment practices update to reflect NFT smart contracts and other blockchain solutions, fashion-tech makes possible a reality in which a garment manufacturing operative can sit down to an interview not only with a CV showing how long they worked at whose factory – but also proven data demonstrating where every single one of their garments has gone worldwide.
Fashion-tech opens up ownership as never before
Owning cool things feels good – once again, if it didn’t, the fashion industry simply wouldn’t exist. We have already discussed how the blockchain can help to streamline manufacture and distribution of garments; how it can revolutionise traceability to fight both environmental and fraudulent concerns; and even how it can benefit the individuals whose working lives are spent creating the beautiful items we love to wear.
Yet let’s now turn to the other side of fashion-tech and the blockchain – ownership and enjoyment of our fashion items themselves, as customers.
At face value and with broad strokes, much of this is related to the creation of digital twins of the goods you own – for example, the idea that you could buy a fantastic pair of limited edition sneakers, and receive a unique NFT replica of them for your avatar to wear in the metaverse.
However, this level of ownership is just one facet of a far more deep and enriching dialogue that’s shaping modern fashion-tech breakthroughs today. The level of ownership that an NFT or the smart tag blockchain creates is a level up from the traditional store bought receipt of purchase, or your order confirmation email when you pre-order a hot new sunglasses design ahead of time.
Instead, the blockchain, and your wallet address, can impart a new sense of ownership with the likes of not only a digital NFT receipt for the purchase of high end goods, for example, but also further insight into how and where each component of how your new favourite outfit ever was made.
The digital ownership on the blockchain imparted to those who buy a brand’s product doesn’t merely enhance authenticity and traceability in similar ways to those we’ve already described – but it also lends a sense of community and exclusivity to the brand’s identity as a whole, in a similar way to NFT ownership.
This level of ownership promises to revolutionise the pre-loved luxury garment industry too – and indeed, already is. Using blockchain fashion-tech that identifies donors, traces that charitable funds make their way to the right destinations and defines the journey of a given garment with full precision and integrity, some companies have already transformed how pre-loved luxury items are bought, sold, traded and donated.
As circular economics becomes an ever more dominant point of dialogue in countless industries – fashion most definitely included – buyers and traders of pre-loved luxury items are certain to feel reassured by the transparency and level of ownership unlocked by blockchain technology.
After all, each buyer is unique, and the threshold of who wants what in which condition is down to the individual. A buyer who only wants a luxury garment that has seen one previous owner can verify that on the blockchain, for example – while similarly, someone who is keen to ensure their pre-loved luxury goods go to a safe and loving home can trace that journey.
Digital twins – fashion-tech beyond your avatar
At the broadest level, digital twins are not exactly new. In industries such as logistics and manufacturing, organisations make use of digital twins, with or without blockchain backing, to simulate problem solving or understand how best to deploy vehicles and assets in ways that don’t involve physically and expensively experimenting with the real thing.
Fashion-tech has been flirting with digital twins as NFTs and blockchain assets for some time now – and that relationship is becoming ever more deep and involved. As we have alluded to already, a digital twin is not just a 3D model of a garment or fashion accessory designed for use within the metaverse – although the appeal of such a thing is definitely high for those who like to look their best online as well as in our analogue reality.
Instead, digital twins also become the bedrock by which blockchain fashion-tech solutions can function. Luxury brands investing in promoting transparency and traceability in the ways we have described throughout today’s article, for example, are likely to use digital twins as the asset NFT into which all such data is held.
That means that, once again, having a digital twin of a physical luxury garment you buy isn’t just for metaverse bragging rights – it also has an admirable function as a blockchain data repository in its own right.
Already growing in popularity in Italy, the world’s fashion capital, digital twins of luxury clothing items are growing rapidly as blockchain interest surrounding fashion-tech becomes more pronounced.
However, the true potential of digital twins also rests in the more aesthetic side of style too – always appealing to any fashion-tech connoisseur. Embedded in the data of many digital twin NFT items is data on what other accentuating pieces the same designer has created, for example, which serves two functions.
Firstly, an owner is able to make far more informed purchasing choices when next shopping, while remaining in a given brand or designer’s product ecosystem.
Secondly, sales teams keeping up to date with fast moving trends and demanding clientele can see a luxury fashion designer’s own recommendations displayed before them within a digital twin’s blockchain data, helping retailers sustain an air of prestige and hyper-competence when suggesting what luxury items best pair with which.
Naturally, this extends to buyers’ own wardrobes too, if they wish – it’s easy to picture a scenario in which smart fashion-tech garments can essentially suggest to a stylish fashionista what to wear and pair with one another when she simply cannot decide for herself – or wants a good look fast for a last minute event.
The search for smart tag standardisation
Just as there are thousands of cryptocurrencies, many of which are simply aping one another – no pun intended – there today runs the risk of a glut of fashion-tech blockchains that competitors flock to essentially avoid one another and safeguard their secrets.
As industry pundits have recognised, the fashion industry is one in which competitive advantages are safeguarded as precious, and with good reason. However, this level of siloing and shying away makes it more difficult for a true smart tag fashion NFT blockchain to be effectively established.
Yet with the smart tag market rapidly growing worldwide – from the luxury fashion houses of Italy to the mass-produced manufacturers of North America and beyond – the time to get onboard the fashion-tech revolution has definitely arrived. For once, the notion of being fashionably late to the smart tag takeoff simply isn’t an option.
The true victor in the creation of an effective fashion-tech blockchain will be those organisations and developers best suited to creating an interoperable, scalable and intuitive blockchain technology solution. It needs to allow every smart-tag and NFT to seamlessly transition from producers to retailers to owners and back again, sustain traceability and ownership throughout.
Smart contract functionality and optional NFT digital twins for use in the metaverse, or simply for the thrill of collection, will give fashion-tech on the blockchain as many aesthetic advantages as it does functional ones.
And the business best suited to the job? It needs to be an established blockchain software solutions provider – an organisation that has traced the evolution of this landmark technology from its inception, and stands ready to partner with the world’s most iconic fashion brands in bringing smart tag technology and NFT ownership into our reality.
The fashion industry is changing – and it’s not just about this season’s latest looks. As fashion-tech steps boldly forward onto the catwalk, will you be joining us on stage?
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