BOOM is helping in the disruption process of several legacy industries, such as fashion, by connecting fashion professionals and enabling a platform for industry leaders, designers and artists effectively connect with their communities. The future of fashion, we believe, is decentralized, and traditional brands such as Gucci, Balenciaga, and Louis Vuitton are leveraging blockchain technology and NFTs to enter this space. We are seeing even more ventures and innovative projects being built by independent creators, artists, and entrepreneurs.
So to help us understand these opportunities and explore where the industry is headed and the impact web3 has on it, BOOM initiated the topic of “The Impact of Web3 on the Fashion Industry” on September 9th. The event was co-hosted by Bilel, AiScholars, and Dina. We were glad to have these four guests join us:
Rarityjan: CEO of Dopamine
Paola Pinna: 3D Artist
Schirin Negahbanai: Digital Artist & Fashion designer
Leeren: CTO of Dopamine
Full episode: https://twitter.com/boomapporg/status/1568099169524674561?s=20&t=ASz4FrzRGllafGTALMJQfQ
Q1: How does everyone get into the web3 space and what do you think is interesting about it?
Paola Pinna: I got into web3 at the start of 2021 when I first minted my NFT, before that, I didn’t know what blockchain was. I was lucky enough to have like a pretty big NFT collector on my contact and I was like wow I love your work and do you wanna do NFTs? I quickly picked it up from there and it has been an amazing journey so far. It was very spontaneous but also like at the time when everyone was pretty much joining, it was just right at the boom maybe.
Schirin Negahbani: I’m generally working in the digital space to create digital transformation for almost 10 years. And I’ve always been excited about tech / 3D, technology for fashion. However, then it sort of boomed into my mind at the beginning of 2021, generating pieces for an NFT platform so fashion out there is materialized and blockchain connected to all sorts of functionality and usability. And from a creator’s perspective, besides everything that I loved about digital is that digital design gives us support for physical limitations that you have for creating new physical pieces and be that connections to physical pieces or dressing your avatar on those social platforms.
Rarityjan: I got into web3 space honestly as a collector first. I was just really bored and some friends of mine started buying those pudgy penguins. I was like what’s going on and started looking more into space and really found my passion. I have loved fashion my entire life and fashion seems like collecting NFTs, going for art, going for the high, and chasing the rarity, so that kind of high space just loving art and then finding a way just bridge to my favorite fashion and NFTs, so now we are here.
Leeren: As for me, I come more from the crypto side of things. Back in 2013, I really got into blockchain and bitcoin mainly waved the marketing finance and then the NFT boom happened and I just thought it was a great way of building more transparency and composing ability and the system, especially with artists.
Q2: How do you envision the future of digital fashion?
Schirin Negahbani: I’m kind of curious and excited about the hardware development that is at the moment I think preventing some areas of digital fashion to go further. We already have mixed-reality, digital fashion pieces such as Snapchat filters or Instagram which now have body tracking capabilities for one or two years. However, you still need to use your phone, so when you look at yourself, it always needs to be selfie-mood. Or when you use VR or AR technology, you used to have glasses, which are not yet used it every-day-life so much. But I’m very excited about Apple Glasses. Once they bring out AR glasses, it goes to the market that even contact lens with AR functionality is developed and becomes more consumer-friendly. At that time I think fashion maybe had many more application areas so that I could express my digital identity, and everyone could see directly by using these glasses, lenses, or some point in our bodies with integrated technology.
Paola Pinna: Also I think the metaverse generally should head towards more integrability, just to make things smoother. I think the space would really benefit from integrable ability because at the moment is very hard that most metaverse you’re not allowed to use your customer avatars or put your customized clothes on. I think that it is a very significant thing to represent ourselves with our avatars in the metaverse, being able to fully represent ourselves and our identity in that way. So I think we are working towards making everything smoother in that sense, but also I think that there is gonna be a lot more gaming fiction and being able to make it fun and more sociable as a platform and metaverse in general.
Leeren: In the future, we can imagine going to a store, we’re talking about physical items like Air Jordan 14, and we are heavily inspired by MJ Ferrari. Imagine that when you check out, not only get the shoes, a digital representation of the shoes in your wallet across several different blockchains but also get a Ferrari toy car as an NFT and get like avatar that is bundled with that. And imagining all those things are directly placed into your own cyber world, where you own that car, like your own avatar, and maybe that avatar is what you get to dress up. So decomposability and interoperability are definitely the two most fascinating aspects, with regards to the future of fashion and gameFi for me. So those two things are really exciting.
Q3: Are there any difficulties you’re encountering in your work and are there tools or solutions you could think of to fix these?
Paola Pinna: I think the instability that is definitely the biggest challenge, but also I think the low poly count for like building spaces in special for instance, or even selling assets, not just art but generally the low poly count of the models that can be uploaded in the metaverse is very limiting. My main software is blender and unreal engine so I generally work is pretty heavy, files and models, etc. Obviously, if I need to translate an avatar for the metaverse, it’s quite a task. There is something like crypto technology downsizing. So I do hope there will be some sort of way either to maybe optimize this or something that can support heavier things that would be super helpful.
Schirin Negahbani: One point that I would like to maybe bring up as well as for certain metaverse that like Decentraland, Roblox and Sandbox sometimes part of this also have some limitations or abilities. For example, I was very happy to be able to show some of my pieces in a gallery of a metaverse fashion show, which is like there are opened decentralized worlds where you can create your characters and I also release them as wearable. But the design behind it and I should produce a different approach if I was to create pieces for Roblox’s different metaverse. So basically, it is a new challenge or even a new opportunity to match the technical aspects of the metaverse environment.
Q4: For the people that have traditional fashion and 3D fashion experience, can you share the main differences between working in one space and the other space, and what you like or struggle with the transition?
Paola Pinna: Personally I think the transition is difficult even outside the web3, for instance, I work with Schirin producing the avatars. The standard workflow is like applying dress for every avatar and the challenges are pretty much the same you don’t have software that does everything so you kind of go back and forth with the 3D artists and to the avatar artist’s new animation. Generally, we’re still like quite early in all these and there are gonna be a lot of improvements very soon. But I’m seeing a lot of improvements with the avatar process that getting easier and easier. But generally, all stuff takes time to make and build, which is good because it’s a craft. It takes effort and definitely the challenge is there, so we need to work around and collaboration is the key for me because they are used to doing a lot of things so low before, but now I’m realizing that actually, to make things really good, you need to work with other people and everyone has to put their expertise in especially in web3.
Schirin Negahbani: Maybe to add a bit further to this question, in general, what you can’t forget is what people often think from my experience is that just because digital is much faster, this action not true. Working beautifully requires a lot of craft and much of trying and failing and trying again but this also mastering your expertise. There are a lot of things I personally absolutely adore about working in space which is your creative freedom is not being limited to physical boundaries. I like to use animation that transforms shapes as such. But an aspect that I love about traditional fashion is also the activity, you can so having the data space but is it different sometimes you’re touching beautiful fabrics surfaces that is something I have not experienced in the digital space. So I think both worlds have a specific thing to do. And what I really like is when it comes together.
About BOOM Talks
BOOM Talks is a series of space events started by the official BOOM Twitter, focusing on industry trends and hot topics, regularly inviting celebrities, pioneers and KOL from crypto to share their views and opinions.
See More:
BOOM Talks 1 Recap: Is SocialFi Gonna be the Next Big Trend?
BOOM Talks 2 Recap: Survival in a Bear Market
BOOM Talks 3 Recap: If mining crisis comes, how do we survive？
BOOM Talks 4 Recap: Your Privacy and Security in Web3 Era
BOOM Talks 5 Recap: How Fed Rate Hikes Affect Crypto？
BOOM Talks 6 Recap: Soulbound Token, the cornerstone of Web3?
BOOM Talks 7 Recap: Will Dali Become the Next “Bay Area”?
About BOOM
BOOM is a SocialFi platform connecting Web2.0 and Web3.0. Since it was launched in January, the early users have exceeded 100K and Boom has now become the most popular decentralized Crypto Lovers community in 2022.
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