On International Women’s Day, the Stockholm fashion brand Rave Review, which consists of co-founders Josephine Bergqvist and Livia Schück, who we interviewed first back in 2018, planned on releasing their first drop of NFT digital art titled Cryptopanties. However, due to the global situation and current war, the designers decided to postpone the drop of the NFT to April 22nd, hoping that by then the situation will be better. For now, we find some escape in their intelligent designs.
The new technological landscape of NFTs and cryptocurrency, although hyper present in the media at the moment, isn’t easy to understand. This collection not only provides women with a guide on how to understand cryptocurrency but makes a statement about the sexy nature of upcycling itself, as the brand is specialised in upcycling fabrics into environmentally friendly statement clothing. We talk to them about why sustainability is crucial to fashion, why they’ve set up a guide to NFTs to accompany their collection, and why these pairs of panties are important to women worldwide.
Ravereview Metalmagazine 3.jpg
Ravereview Metalmagazine 4.jpg
Your fashion brand, Rave Review, is a female-led Stockholm based label that upcycles deadstock and fabric such as duvets and blankets to make one-of-a-kind garments that not only look bold and modern but help the environment. What was your inspiration to start an upcycling brand?
We started the brand 4.5 years ago because we couldn't find any brands, at least at that time, that did upcycling in an interesting and luxurious way. As much as we felt an urge to create something completely sustainable, we wanted to create our dream job where we could express ourselves completely free creatively.
Your pieces feature a lot of chaotic clashing patterns, exciting shapes, and colourful ideas. How would you describe the image of your brand?
We would describe it as eclectic, punky, and fun. Since we need to work a bit with what we get when collecting and sourcing materials, mixing and matching different kinds of print together is a significant part of our design process and DNA as a brand.
It makes sense that the next logical step for a sustainable brand that places a great emphasis on the unique quality of their clothes would move on to the production of NFTs – as two pieces with the same design may use different upcycled fabrics, making the clothes more sought after as they are one-of-a-kind. However, what pushed you to dip your toe into NFTs?
Firstly, we have been interested in exploring how to work digitally for a couple of years. Initially, the thoughts were more circling around to add different digital layers onto the physical garments. Since a lot of our products are unique, we had a lot of ideas on how to emphasise this digitally.
When NFTs started to get big, we realised it was a perfect way to enter this universe. The only problem was that there didn’t exist yet any environment friendly blockchains at that time, until recently with one of the more climate-neutral currencies, Solana, which we will release these NFTs on.
Ravereview Metalmagazine 5.jpg
Ravereview Metalmagazine 6.jpg
Your new collection Cryptopanties features nine pairs of upcycled underwear named after feminine icons, such as the pair titled Frida, you have shown off on your Instagram. I read that your focus on women, and on women’s underwear, was intentional, as the world of NFTs and the metaverse has so far been dominated by men. Can you expand on this?
We did the first drop of tokens on women’s day that gave give benefits for the final drop of the panties that will happen in the coming weeks.
It’s a fact that the biggest part of the crypto world is male-dominated, and we can understand why this is, since it’s not very appealing yet for women or generally people outside of the crypto bubble. If the metaverse is going to be as big and powerful in the future, as people presume, it’s super important to bring in values of diversity and gender equality at an early stage.
How will these NFTs of your fashion increase female presence in the metaverse?
First of all, we are introducing our followers (which is eighty-eight per cent women) to the digital world of NFTs, we do this by showing appealing art and fashion pieces. Since it’s a bit complicated to wrap your head around all of this, we are guiding people all the way – creating a phantom wallet, buying Solana currency – and the final step in the guide will be how to purchase our NFT.
These panties come with an upcycled NFT, which allows the buyer early access to clothing drops and collaborations, discounts, and exclusive events. Is purchasing a pair of these panties, and the NFT that comes with it, a matter of establishing status and identity?
Our panties are sold as digital NFTs. Every single one of them is unique. It will have perks in the future both in the physical and digital world. It will also work as a key to the platform we are creating with an app called Werz. On this platform we will share exclusive information of events and offer sneak peeks of upcoming projects and pre-sales. For us, this is a part of the band’s community building.
Ravereview Metalmagazine 7.jpg
Ravereview Metalmagazine 8.jpg
I think many of your customers will be happy that you are releasing a guide to NFTs to accompany your release of the Cryptopanties line. What are your goals for this? Are you hoping more people start to buy and sell art online as it is more environmentally friendly in our current climate of fast fashion?
Yes, the guide has been very appreciated, since most people don’t know how this works. One of the main goals of this project is to invite our crowd into the space. One of the main reasons why we wanted to explore this is because of the sustainable angle – to make fashion but not produce physical garments (the physical collections will always be our main focus though). We also see a big opportunity for creatives in general and by this project, we want to show another kind of expression.
Do you believe that in the future, many brands will sell garments digitally like this?
Yes, for sure! This is still very early and we believe this scene is going to grow in the coming years. But, of course, it’s hard to say exactly how. We see this as a pilot project where we explore ways of working with digital fashion.
What is the future for your brand?
Rave Review will always be all about vintage and secondhand material, that’s the core of the brand. Depending on how the NFT project develops, we are going to set a strategy for the digital drops. It’s going to happen a lot for the brand during 2022, we are at a stage when the brand is growing. We look forward to expanding our team and also focusing a lot on international PR, we will be more present at the Parisian fashion scene
Ravereview Metalmagazine 9.jpg
Ravereview Metalmagazine 10.jpg
Ravereview Metalmagazine 11.jpg
Ravereview Metalmagazine 12.jpg
Ravereview Metalmagazine 14.jpg
Ravereview Metalmagazine 15.jpg
Ravereview Metalmagazine 16.jpg
Ravereview Metalmagazine 17.jpg
Ravereview Metalmagazine 18.jpg
Ravereview Metalmagazine 19.jpg
Ravereview Metalmagazine 20.jpg
Ravereview Metalmagazine 21.jpg
Ravereview Metalmagazine 22.jpg
Ravereview Metalmagazine 23.jpg
Ravereview Metalmagazine 24.jpg
Ravereview Metalmagazine 25.jpg
Ravereview Metalmagazine 26.jpg
Ravereview Metalmagazine 27.jpg
Ravereview Metalmagazine 29.jpg
Ravereview Metalmagazine 30.jpg