Daria Vasileva, currently living in Washington DC, USA, is a visual artist and fashion illustrator, with a special focus on people and fashion. In her artworks, Daria seeks to transcend the limits of fashion illustration, seamlessly transforming them into charming fashion portraits. Her unique style is influenced by classical art, concentrating on the portrayal of feelings and the beauty of the moment together with the depiction of individuals and their surroundings. Each painting tells a unique story. By utilizing figurative art, fashion, and decoration, Daria explores the intricate relationship between fashion and one’s individuality. She is driven by the desire to showcase fashion through her perspective by capturing the interaction between characters and fashion in everyday life, beyond fashion shows.

Hue&Eye recently interviewed her to discover more about what drove her to make art.

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Hello Daria! When or how have you understood you wanted to become an artist?

I have loved drawing since my childhood. It is very organic for me. But only a few years ago I decided to combine two of my passions: fashion and art and become a professional artist.

Can you briefly say something about your technique and tell us what drives you to make art?

Women and fashion are the two main themes of my artworks. I see myself as an artist whose paintings are elegant fashion illustrations, influenced by traditional art. What inspires me a lot is to show fashion through my perspective. Therefore, I capture characters in everyday situations. My paintings are stories, where either the fashion theme or the depicted character are both important as they support and complement each other.

All my artworks are painted in watercolors. I love this medium because I can achieve incredible transparency, and create a luminous and delicate effect that is unreachable with any other medium.

What is the main feature that has changed in your works or practice throughout the years?

I think the most important thing was the decision to follow my intuition to create with traditional mediums despite digital art trends and to establish my unique style as an artist.

Which artist primarily inspires your work? And is there something else, outside visual arts, that keeps you motivated?

I would say that Henry Matisse and Amedeo Modigliani inspire me a lot with their mastery of color and unique style. Also, artists like Helen Downie and Laura Laine whose artworks and aesthetics I admire a lot. They fill me with a desire to create. And of course fashion, as the art by itself, is to me an endless source of inspiration and reflection.

How would you like people to engage with your work?

I hope for my art to be perceived as a visual retreat to beauty and to evoke feelings of joy, happiness, and delight in my audience.

Spread the word! Do you have anything exciting on the horizon?

Recently I participated in art awards and competitions, where my works have received recognition. One was especially important to me since it is a well well-known award among fashion illustrators. For now, I am focused on the creative process and new ideas.

Go here to visit Daria’s website, or follow her on Instagram here >

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While non-fungible tokens are up and rising, there’s still a quizzical for fashion brands and NFTs. 

Will fashion brands grow by NFTs? Questions on whether the young crypto wealthy public will be inspired by luxury fashion NFTs and what they will look like are starting to settle.

As for today, while stories of NFTs record sales continue to break the news, the fashion world still sits quietly. The truth is, fashion brands are starting to studying blockchain creativity and business opportunities.

The question is just who will pull the trigger first, says Marjorie Hernandez, founder of Lukso, a blockchain platform for fashion and digital lifestyle. Hernandez takes over the urge for fashion brands to keep ahead of the e-commerce trend, hence the enthusiasm to experiment with new technologies like blockchain.

As anything digital can be turned into a unique NFT with its ownership recorded on a digital ledger or blockchain from art to music, people in the fashion world are starting to ask themselves what they can do in the NFT space. 

Proponents claim that NFTs’ scarcity and ability to accrue value can bring digital fashion closer to authentic fashion. Last March, Burberry luxury fashion brand has designed outfits for one of China’s biggest video games – for which players can buy the clothes – known as skins – to adorn in-game characters.

The current Fashion NFTs attitude.

 At the moment, though, NFT fashion still has an artistic over the commercial appeal. Brands can currently sell NFTs as GIFs which have limited usage for the buyers. The current fashion NFT user experience requires the luxury fashion shine that is presently replaced by a virtual gaming offer, as on the virtual platform Decentraland, where players can buy fashion NFTs to inhabit their avatars. On Decentraland, we encounter various marketplaces holding real-world brands, although the outfits are cartoonish and pixelated. More further, the annoyance of setting up a browser-based Ethereum wallet is not appealing to luxury fashion brand buyers.

Things are yet to change.

Recently, Neuno CEO Natalie Johnson, a new platform for digital fashion collectibles and wearables to buy, collect, wear or trade and sell on the Flow Blockchain, says things are at a turning point.

They are working with a social media platform specializing in filters, so the owner will post a photo of themselves ‘wearing’ the dress. Furthermore, they are also working with one of Asia’s biggest games to make it possible to dress their gaming avatar in the outfit. The buyer will need to buy the NFT once to use it in multiple different ways.

Neuno only works directly with brands to ensure a premium user experience and authenticity. Also, the buyer may pay with credit cards to exclude the need to own cryptocurrency. 

Fashion NFTs as digital collectibles

Many smaller brands and retailers have already hopped into the NFT game in various creative ways and are selling fashion NFTs on marketplaces like OpenSea, Nifty Gateway, and KnownOrigin.

For example, Clothia – a US online retailer in the accessible luxury department, applies NFTs as a digital counterpart of a real-life garment by auctioning NFT dresses. The winning bidders will receive the analogous real-life dresses. Also, both the NFTs and the physical garments are one-of-a-kinds.

Clothia also became the first established fashion business to launch a community-driven cryptocurrency known as $Cloth. 

The real opportunity is that one may now create all kinds of digital couture looks that could never exist in real life, says Amber Jae Slooten, co-founder of The Fabricant, a digital fashion house. They recently ran a 3D fashion design competition in collaboration with Adidas and Karlie Kloss’s nonprofit, Kode With Klossy. The top 20 submissions were then auctioned as NFTs. They were on display in a gallery in Decentraland. This way, visitors inhabiting avatars could view the artwork and bid on the designs virtually. 

The winning design netted 1.4 ETH, about $2,400 at current exchange rates. Proceeds from the auction went directly to the featured artists. The voluntary contributions instead supported new events and programming for Kode With Klossy’s alumni community of more than 5,000 scholars.

Not bad for now!

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