Aside from one pair of £2 million sneakers, the fashion world has managed to swerve the virtual leper’s hand of the NFT, which over the past month or so, has contaminated the art and music world. Grimes is reported to have sold $6 million dollars worth of art as Non Fungible Tokens, Azealia Banks flogged an audio sex tape for $17,000, and Beeple, a previously unknown artist, is behind the world’s most expensive NFT sale, bagging $69 million for a collage.
In the past week, however, it would seem that fashion has also fallen foul. With a hand-up from art collective MITNFT, Kate Moss clambered onto the NFT bandwagon with a series of three videos, which sold for £16,000 respectively and now, a virtual hoodie has been sold to an anonymous bidder for £19,000 on the digital art marketplace blockparty.co.
Courtesy of streetwear label Overpriced, the hoodie in question is exactly how you would imagine a piece of NFT clothing to look. All black, emblazoned with a QR code-style logo, and sprayed with slime green graffiti lettering, which reads “fuck your money“. Think Off-White if it had been produced in a secondary school graphics department. According to the brand, the hoodie is meant to instigate a “social commentary on the madness of money meeting art“ – the irony. And unlike many digital pieces, this is sold alongside a real life copy. In other words, it's a wearable NFT, aka a normal hoodie.
Still, the boom in NFTs opens up a whole world of possibility when it comes to digital fashion. Overpriced’s co-founder, Leighton James, told Hypebeast that “we are a group of artists looking to create art-powered crypto fashion that aims to challenge the conceptions of what luxury fashion is. NFTs provide a unique way for artists to designate what is real and what is authentic,” said James. “Our customers are purchasing unique wearable art that no one else in the world has”.
