Blockchain-enabled digital fashion creates new business models for brands

cointelegraph.com:

Nonfungible tokens (NFT) may be disrupting the trillion-dollar fashion industry, but NFTs are just one piece of a much larger puzzle that is revolutionizing this sector. Rather, blockchain technology as a whole continues to be a game-changer for the fashion industry. 

While blockchain-based supply chains served as some of the earliest use cases of how the technology could help detect fraudulent items, digital wearables being built on blockchain networks are now coming to play. Megan Kaspar, co-founder and managing director of Magnetic — a privately held crypto and blockchain investment and incubation firm — told Cointelegraph that digital fashion is a very powerful use case for blockchain technology. However, she noted that many brands remain unaware of the value that blockchain can provide in terms of creating new business models.

In order to explain the massive opportunities blockchain can bring to today’s fashion world, Kaspar noted that all brands will initially move to a “digital-first” model in the near future:

To put this in perspective, Kaspar was recently featured on the cover of the January issue of Haute Living. This was unique in the sense that it was the first fashion magazine cover in the United States to display digital luxury designer garments on a human. Additionally, the Haute Living cover is equipped with QR codes that generate augmented reality try-on functions, allowing readers to scan barcodes to see how each digital piece featured could look. The designs, which were created by Fendi and digitized by DressX, can then be purchased directly on the Fendi website.

While innovative from a marketing perspective, there are other benefits of digital-first fashion. For instance, Adrienne Faurote, fashion