Adidas has announced an official collaboration with Prada for an NFT project that will be released on Polygon.
Adidas and Prada team up
Not too long ago, Adidas announced its partnership with crypto exchange Coinbase and the popular metaverse game The Sandbox to expand its business into the virtual world.
However, the company’s latest partner is even more prestigious, as the sportswear giant announced a collaboration with Italian luxury fashion house Prada. The two fashion giants plan to launch a user-generated NFT art project called “Adidas for Prada Re-Source.” As revealed on the apparel manufacturer’s Twitter account, it will be “an ambitious first-of-its-kind NFT project featuring user-generated and creator-owned art.”
Fans will be able to submit photos to Polygon, 3,000 of which will be minted as NFTs. In collaboration with digital artist Zach Lieberman, who will eventually combine and recreate the photographs to create one canvas that will also be sold as an NFT, the 3,000 best photos will be minted as unique tokens. This mirrors the famous Beeple NFT, “The first 10,000 days,” which also was created from individual artworks. Most of the proceeds from the NFT sales will go to Slow Factory, a non-profit dedicated to improving sustainability and environmental literacy.
Blockchain tech disrupting fashion
Most recent talk has been about how NFTs and blockchain technology can disrupt the games sector. Deservedly so, considering Gamestop is planning to venture into NFTs, as is consumer tech giant Samsung. But all the focus on gaming has drawn attention from another sector benefiting from the new technology: fashion.
The most obvious use case for blockchain technology is to help secure supply chains. The technology could help prevent fraud by introducing more transparency to the fashion industry. Apparel supposedly produced in Italy could be tracked by using non-fungible tokens, limiting the appeal of counterfeit goods. Furthermore, blockchain technology could solve accounting fraud by creating an unalterable block of records.
However, an even bigger trend may be digital wearables that are built on the blockchain. Megan Kaspar, the MD and co-founder of Magnetic, a crypto and blockchain investment and incubation firm, said that many brands were unaware of the value blockchain can provide in terms of creating new business models. However, in light of the opportunities that blockchain tech brings to the fashion world, she expects all brands to eventually move to a “digital-first” model.
In an interview with Haute Living, a fashion magazine, Kaspar noted that digital technology reduces time, energy, and capital that brands needs to be invested by brands and that digital tailoring superimposed onto photos would become a reality soon. Digital collectibles released by labels like Nike and Adidas would be the first step towards a virtual future, but Kaspar explained that “harnessing blockchain technology and NFTs affords production quantity, visibility of each garment and globally accessible for the first time in history. Limited-edition drops and on-demand manufacturing could easily be byproducts of Web3.”
In that light, NFT investors should look out for the next drop of non-fungible tokens by a major brand since this trend has only just begun.