With waning mainstream interest in NFTs, the medium has shifted from mass appeal to the realm of the niche. For example, NFT artists cater to a dedicated collector base, while luxury labels tap into Web3 as a means of marketing to their deep-pocketed customers.
FEWOCiOUS (AKA Victor Langlois) is one such artist. In 2020, the then 17-year-old trans artist received $90 for the sale of her first painting; In the intervening years, FEWOCiOUS has raised over $18m in digital and physical artworks.
Later this summer, FEWOCiOUS is set to launch its dedicated “Web3 experiment,” Fewoworld. Whatever The Outside World Thinks About NFTs And The Metaverse Is Irrelevant At Fuwoworld, Who Earned Nearly 25k twitter followers months before launch.
Meanwhile, cultural giants like Nike and Adidas have financial and cultural investments in NFTs, partnering with tentpole brands like Nike-owned Metaverse studio RTFKT and Adidas’ Bored Ape Yacht Club.
This collaborative approach appears to be important to adidas. While it is eager to explore the metaverse alone with its ALTS project, adidas is equally interested in seeking like-minded partners to boost the visibility of its Web3 ventures.
Everyone benefits: adidas’ digital-native affiliates receive an official-sounding stamp of association with adidas and adidas gains access to a built-in fanbase.
Hence, FEWOCiOUS x adidas.
For their first adidas collaboration, FEWOCiOUS chose to remix the adidas Campus 00s, a buzzy sneaker fit for today’s Y2K-hungry consumers.
And, because this is a collaboration with an established NFT artist, adidas and FEWOCiOUS are dropping more than just the sneaker.
It will all be available starting June 22 on adidas’ website, where only 4,500 consumers can purchase the Trefoil Flower Mint Pass. According to adidas, pass holders will be given exclusive access to redeem it for the FEWOCiOUS x adidas Campus 00s shoe, after which the pass will be “upgraded to a digital twin”.
The digital sneaker will “become interoperable as a virtual wearable” within the FEWOCiOUS’ FewoWorld project and adidas’ ALTS metaverse. It’s adidas’ first token-gated, NFC-tagged sneaker that’s also NFT-connected.
When NFTs and web3 were hot novelty a few years ago, many outlets (us included to a lesser extent) predicted that this market was the future of sneakerdom. not enough.
These powerful companies were never going to move their production entirely towards digital archiving; Instead, they will incorporate virtual goods into and alongside their product lines.
Like IRL sneakers, these efforts will succeed or fail based on the authenticity of the partnership, which will be defined by the brand’s abilities to appeal to fans already tapped into these territories.
As personal and organic as it is, FEWOCiOUS’s adidas collaboration can also be taken as big picture evidence of how adidas, and perhaps brands at large, will deal with NFTs and web3 moving forward.
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Source: www.highsnobiety.com
