The Hamburg e-commerce specialist About You Holding SE is breaking new ground with a shop for digital fashion. The company announced on Tuesday that its Hypewear platform would offer “fashion NFTs for the general public” in the future. With its focus on the largest possible target group, Hypewear is “one of the pioneers in the market,” explained the online fashion retailer: “According to the motto ‘From Tech to Human’, NFTs are not only affordable for digital fashion fans, but also without crypto knowledge accessible.”
According to About You, registration is now possible, and the alpha version of the new platform should go live “in the next two months”. Hypewear will then offer “a range of luxury and streetwear from leading 3D fashion and graphic designers as well as classic brands from the fields of fashion, sports, music and gaming,” the company explained. After the opening, weekly digital designs would be “launched in limited drops with exclusive one-offs on Hypewear”.
Co-CEO Müller: “We want to become the destination for digital fashion and the mainstream wardrobe of the Metaverse”
Tarek Müller, co-founder and co-CEO of About You, explained the project: “The Metaverse has opened up a new, exciting world for companies and fashion, which we at About You also want to help shape. With Hypewear, we are bringing our brand into the digital world and are now making it possible for everyone to be part of it,” he said in a statement. “Our vision is that all physical fashion pieces can also be used as digital assets in the future. We want to become the destination for digital fashion and the mainstream wardrobe of the Metaverse.”
The company responded to the widespread criticism of the environmental impact of the underlying blockchain technology by choosing Algorand as its blockchain partner: Its process is “fast, scalable, secure and also CO2-negative,” emphasized Chris Nickel, who as Director Content at About You. “In contrast to Ethereum, for example, Algorand can process thousands of transactions per second with transaction costs in the micro-cent range. This allows us to offer our customers the mining of NFTs free of charge – without gas fees,” explained Nickel.