Since Christie's auction of Beeple's purely digital work with a unique NFT (non-fungible token) hit the headlines in March for selling at $69,346,250 USD, NFTs have become a constant obsession in different fields. The fashion industry showed an interest and so far there have been quite a few experiments with futuristic garments and accessories sold as highly collectible NFTs. Yet many of us still prefer owning a physical product and some labels are working on this aspect, among them there are also Rob Harrison and Felicity Moy, a transdisciplinary design duo out of Sydney, Australia.
With a background in engineering and digital design (Rob focuses on the code, operations and strategic running of the label, while Felicity concentrates on the arty aspects, leading the creative direction and product development sections of the label), the duo recently launched a new streetwear label called MOY NFO.
The two designers wanted to embrace NFTs, but were also looking at the possibilities of creating a physical product, so they came up with the Non Fungible Object (NFO). Consumers can buy on their site a physical product like a T-shirt, but they will find a QR embedded in the garment (on the front or the back of the design) that, when scanned, will open up a non-fungible token. Other people will be able to see on the OpenSea marketplace the digital garment purchased by a specific consumer, but that consumer will remain its sole owner.
Drop 1 - the first collection by MOY NFO - is just out and it is characterised by pastel colours and tech inspired prints. Through their drops, Harrison and Moy hope to explore the realm between digital and analogue and bridge the gap between NFTs and physical objects as they think this in-between space is where the future of fashion lies.
Can you introduce us to your label, MOY NFO?
Rob Harrison and Felicity Moy: MOY NFO is a streetwear label which looks to bridge the gap between the physical and the digital. We have also implemented an NFT marketplace platform, the traditional ecommerce online store which is one of the first in fashion. We did a soft-launch around a month ago and we have had an amazing uptake in the fashion and crypto community. However, the idea has been bubbling around for about a year when Felicity did her menswear graduate collection featuring embroidered QR codes which linked through to code-based infrastructure.
This year there has been a lot of interest in NFTs, what fascinates you about NFTs and what do you think about all the auctions of arty NFTs that we have seen so far?
Rob Harrison and Felicity Moy: We see NFTs as the future and a really exciting space for creativity! High auction prices have been good for the NFT community and have given a lot of agency back to artists. The high auction price of Beeple’s work "Everydays: The First 5000 Days" came from the fact that it was a collage of 5,000 individual artworks. It puts the final price into perspective when you think that the price per work was around $13,800. We have, however, seen a lot of celebrities cashing in on the NFT trend with poor quality artworks. If this continues there may be a dilution of the quality in the market and this may fuel more unsustainable hype.
How do you feel about the energy waste problem implied by the NFTs?
Rob Harrison and Felicity Moy: The Energy waste problem with NFTs is something which we hope to change through our collections. Fashion, and fast fashion in particular, generates a huge amount of energy use and we know that garments have a lifespan before they need to be purchased again. With our digital/physical garments, consumers are able to keep the digital component of the piece long after the physical garment becomes unusable or broken. We have chosen the Ethereum Blockchain that uses a fraction of the energy which Bitcoin uses. In total, the whole Ethereum 2.0 system uses around 2.2 megawatts of energy which for a large system is a small amount of energy. We see this becoming a widely adopted technology across the community.
Can you tell us more about your NFO (Non-Fungible Object) concept?
Rob Harrison and Felicity Moy: An NFO is a Non-Fungible Object. It is an object which exists simultaneously as a digital and physical form. We wanted to create the concept to find a space between the physical world and the digital world which was almost a grey area – an unexplored space! This became the backbone for our collection.
How does it work for a consumer who wants to purchase one of your products?
Rob Harrison and Felicity Moy: Our online store, an integrated NFT marketplace, removes a lot of the jargon and apprehension for many fashion consumers to enter into the NFT/crypto space. When the consumer buys the NFO, they are purchasing both a physical and digital object at the same time. Our concept centres around garments existing in two forms and challenges the idea that a garment just has to be a physical object or a digital design. Choosing sizes and different garment types is all enabled through the online marketplace where NFTs are essentially set up like a traditional fashion store (S, M, L etc.). When the consumer completes the transaction, they are able to unlock shipping information which allows us to ship their garment anywhere in the world (as we know that the digital world is without borders).
Which currencies do you accept?
Rob Harrison and Felicity Moy: Right now, we except ETH but in future we are looking to use USDC (US Dollar Coin) which is a crypto currency that is based off the US Dollar price, making it very easy for crypto currency newbies to understand its relative value.
Why are you trying to bridge the gap between physical and digital fashion, do you think that digital fashion can’t exist in a purely digital space, but needs the physical realm?
Rob Harrison and Felicity Moy: Fashion is something deeply personal and a lived experience at the end of the day. Fabrics have drape, texture, and very visceral material qualities. The same goes to the political nature of fashion and how the body is perceived when wearing certain garments (e.g. wearing certain clothes in certain contexts). When coming up with our concept, we knew that the vast majority of people would have trouble interacting with digital only clothing, even though it is technically just clothing in a different form. We wanted to make digital fashion accessible with the aid of a real-world artefact – our NFO physical garments. We also wanted to bridge the gap between the mainstream and NFT communities as we saw that a lot of people struggled to see the value in NFT art. We wanted to provide an easy transition into what we see, and has been forecasted to be the future of our assets and design. We also see a trend going towards the digitisation of assets. We wanted to test this on clothing to see how we could integrate existing and emerging technologies to bring the physical world into the digital world.
What inspired Drop 1 and how many designs are included in the first drop?
Rob Harrison and Felicity Moy: Drop 1 is a reflection of how the digital space allows for an anonymous existence as such. The crypto camo features QR codes which have been warped and shifted into a camo print. We wanted to integrate the streetwear culture which is more masculine with the more ethereal nature of the NFT aesthetic - think blurred gradients, chrome motifs and pastels. Our first drop contains 4 garments, all digitally printed and sewn in Melbourne. We are planning to release Drop 1.1 in a couple of weeks and are integrating some very interesting AR software into the designs. So stay tuned!
Which are the signature styles of this first drop?
Rob Harrison and Felicity Moy: The shapes, colours, and overall aesthetic are all influenced by the synergy between the digital space and streetwear design. We are quite influenced by making clothing which anyone can wear and really embrace the fluidity of gender which streetwear evokes. We feature heavily pinks, purples, and greens in our Drop 1. We mirror these in our NFT animations. We focused on creating crisp yet ethereal designs with a futurist twist about them.
Would you make clothes for video game characters?
Rob Harrison and Felicity Moy: Yes, it would be a great avenue for the future. However, right now we are focused on our NFOs.
In your opinion, what’s the future of NFTs?
Rob Harrison and Felicity Moy: It is hard to say as even a couple of years ago we would not have expected things like COVID-19, the rise of NFTs and high interest in crypto. We see NFTs being the best way to authenticate digital items – not just necessarily artworks. We also see this space as a extremely high growth area which will evolve in ways which we cannot even anticipate as legislation and general businesses catch up.
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