Cultural Rebels: Vivienne Tam's collection brings a feminine touch to iconic NFT bad boy's clubs

Vivienne Tam NYFW SS23 Look 3.

By COCO DOLLE, September 2022

In the midst of the Armory art fair week in New York, I received an invitation to attend designer Vivienne Tam’s show set at Tribeca’s Spring Studios. Though I used to mingle with fashion in my modeling years, I was wondering how to make sense of my presence as an art writer until the first set of models hit the runway.  

Pulling from the most popular collectible avatars in the Metaverse, every look in the collection incorporated characters from the Bored Ape Yacht Club, Crypto Punks, CyberKongz Monkeys and Awkward Astronauts. Tam’s elegant printed fabrics and embroidered patches gave a lively physicality to the NFT digital superstars. Bringing a feminine touch to Web3 was the designer’s intention knowing that it is primarily dominated by young men. Heavily criticized, non-fungible tokens are a relatively new artistic medium not yet well understood. Crypto Punks came about in 2017 as early collectibles and have since generated billions worth in sales, shaping a new economy to be built upon for independent artists thanks to its new large pools of collectors. 

Vivienne Tam NYFW SS23 Look 4. 

Known for her culture-bridging approach to design throughout her career, Vivienne’s collaboration with technology and the digital world comes at no surprise in the wake of brands and museums entering the crypto ecosystem. 

Earlier this year, LACMA launched an acquisition fund for digital art by women artists spearheaded by Paris Hilton. More recently MoMA benefactors announced they will be auctioning a wide range of old masters works such as Renoirs and Picassos to expand the museum’s digital presence including purchasing NFTs. 

Vivienne Tam NYFW SS23 Look 5.

The Metaverse is by far the most promising new frontier for creative collaborations and for new ways of seeing art, and we are just at the beginning of it all. WM