FEWOCiOUS & adidas Drop Campus Sneaker, Matching NFT Collab
With the decline in mainstream interest in NFTs, the medium has shifted from mass appeal to the realm of detail. For example, NFT artists cater to a devoted collector base, while luxury brands utilize 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 his first painting; in the intervening years, FEWOCiOUS has generated over $18 million in digital and physical artwork.
Later this summer, FEWOCiOUS will debut its own dedicated “web3 experiment”, FewoWorld. Whatever the outside world thinks about NFTs and the metaverse, it’s irrelevant in FewoWorld, which has accrued nearly 25k Twitter followers months before launch.
Meanwhile, cultural titans like Nike and adidas have financial and cultural investments in NFTs, what with Nike-owned metaverse studio RTFKT and adidas’ partnerships with tentpole brands like Bored Ape Yacht Club.
This collaborative approach seems to be key for adidas. While keen to explore the metaverse itself with its ALTS project, adidas is equally keen to seek like-minded partners to increase the visibility of its web3 ventures.
Everyone benefits: adidas’ digital-native partners receive the official stamp that comes with working with adidas, and adidas gains access to a built-in fan base.
Hence FEWOCiOUS x adidas.
For their debut adidas collaboration, FEWOCiOUS chose to remix the adidas Campus 00s, a suitably lively sneaker that fits well with today’s Y2K-hungry consumers.
And because this is a collaboration with an established NFT artist, adidas and FEWOCiOUS are dropping more than just a sneaker.
It all begins on June 22 on adidas’ website, where only 4,500 consumers can purchase the Trefoil Flower Mint Pass. Holders of the pass will be given exclusive access to redeem it for the FEWOCiOUS x adidas Campus 00s shoe, at which point the pass will be “upgraded to a digital twin,” according to adidas.
The digital sneaker “will be interoperable as a virtual wearable” within FEWOCiOUS’s FewoWorld project and adidas’ ALTS metaverse. This is adidas’ first token-gate, NFC-tagged sneaker that is also linked to an NFT.
When NFTs and web3 were the hot news a few years ago, many outlets (including us, to some extent) predicted that this market was the future of sneakerdom. Not completely.
These powerful companies were never going to fully shift their production towards digital collectibles; instead, they will organically incorporate virtual objects into and alongside their product lines.
As with IRL sneakers, these efforts will succeed or fail based on the authenticity of the partnership, which will be defined by the brands’ abilities to appeal to the fans who have already tapped into these realms.
As personal and organic as it is, FEWOCiOUS’ adidas collaboration can also be taken as a big visual proof of how adidas, and perhaps brands in general, will deal with NFTs and web3 going forward.
