MoonPay Dishes About Its NFT Fashion Blitz

Crypto fintech firm MoonPay has big plans to make non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, both easier to make and easier to buy — and its grand strategy has everything to do with fashion, the company told WWD.

Days after the Council of Fashion Designers of America revealed that it chose the platform to handle transactions for its upcoming NFTs, creative arm MoonPay Studios lit up New York Fashion Week with digital fare for Alo Yoga, Collina Strada and Brandon Maxwell, which hit the shows with an array of NFTs ranging from fun to functional.

Those collaborations aren’t incidental. In an exclusive interview with WWD, the company explained that these are parts of a broader strategy targeting fashion — and now that NYFW is in the bag, MoonPay can put its full attention on its next fashion project: an undisclosed NFT that will pair the platform with a major athletic brand.

The details are still under wraps, but according to Tom Capone, the new head of MoonPay Studios, the vision behind them isn’t. In essence, the company sees fashion as a key to making the metaverse mainstream.

“We think that Web 3.0 is an inevitability, and our mission is to onboard the world,” Capone continued. “Fashion is exciting, because it’s usually at the front of a lot of trends, and it’s usually shaping the way culture moves — shaping actual culture itself.”

A former Creative Artists Agency talent agent and Web 3.0 executive, he innately understands the cultural capital of fashion and entertainment, and the power of their influence on consumer mindsets. “We saw Kanye’s Instagram about Snoop Dogg wearing a Tommy Hilfiger shirt, and that it inspired him more than any other ad or marketing stunt he’d ever seen,” he added. “It went viral, which speaks to a deeper point: Fashion is literally designing the future.”

MoonPay isn’t the only metaverse platform zeroing in on that. Other providers, large and small, have been racing to court brands armed with an array of services. Some merely digitize products or mint 3D files as NFTs, while others develop pop-up stores to showcase them, build out entire multilayered virtual world destinations, stage metaverse events and much more.

For fashion brands and designers, the motivation is evident, both from a creative and business standpoint.

Fashion demands evolution, said Maxwell, who views his MoonPay partnership as a natural step forward, given tech’s continued impact on the world. “This is the new age of digital fashion that breaks the conventional understanding of what fashion can be,” he said. “It’s an opportunity for us to transform, express and embrace more of ourselves, not less.”

Indeed, for designers, there’s creative freedom in a virtual world that’s not beholden to natural laws like gravity or other limitations. The metaverse can look unlimited in a financial sense as well. Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, Burberry and others have already…