Fashion As A Manifesto; Fashion with Soul

Everyone can be NTZNS

NTZNS = NeTZeNS = CitiZeNS of the InterNeT

Combining technology + art to build Bordeless, Genderless, no-gravity Virtual Societies

Co-Creating with the Comunity of technologists, artists and strategists the Future of Fashion with Soul

Promoting and selling digital fashion items in Metaverse & Gaming Platforms 

TVA: Why did you choose the (digital) fashion industry? (You have an interesting background, as an editor-in-chief, brand strategist, and marketer)

Costantino Roselli: Firstly, I always considered myself a storyteller – despite all my titles or any other things that I did. Everything that I learned; I used it as a tool in order to do what I like to do. And the jobs and the titles that I took, I took them because they give me the state that I can share beautiful stories with people and create stories with people and this is what they do.
This is why I choose to work on fashion mostly.
Of course, right now in digital fashion because I believe that fashion is constantly changing and has a lot of things that I learned. I never see fashion as a garment only.
By creating a garment or choosing a garment to wear, you connect with your inner self and you give an advancement to your personal emotions and that is a self-expression of qualities and values that you have inside. You cannot put them out in a different way.
In digital fashion, I love technology, for sure, and I believe that technology is a projection of ourselves. We want to evolve, and this is what I like the most.
I believe that digital fashion is the future - this is why I chose it.

TVA: How did the idea of NTZNS come? Why NTZNS?
Costantino Roselli: Why NTZNS? Definitely I never thought to come-up with a name that is close to a fashion brand.
NTZNS – ‘Netizens’ is more about the movement.
‘Netizens’ means the citizens of the internet. Developing future societies means that you need to build it, to have hundreds of those societies.
The habitats of the new societies can’t be the old-fashioned people with industrial culture. They should have the new culture, which is the metaverse one.
And how can you call them?
You can call the netizens which means the citizens of the internet because the foundation of what we live in right now is the internet. And even if we live right now the web3 or the metaverse or call it however, the red line between the old fashioned culture it starts with the ‘internet’ that was brought toward the end of 90s.

TVA: I found it intriguing to link fashion and storytelling – and when I look at your website, and even by the name of your brand, I see the kind of statement.
So, is Fashion a Manifest or Manifesto as Fashion? How does it blend with storytelling?

Costantino Roselli: Fashion is always a Manifesto, it has to do with the individual; it’s not something that you created because of a company, it’s more selfies.
We live right now in the era of creators, the era of individuals. Because when the internet arrived, then we had social media.
What social media gave to us, it was amazing, but nobody understood it well, or they didn’t want to understand anyway. Social media came and said: ‘right now if you want to do whatever you want to do, you can do it. You don’t need any permission’.
You don’t need any authority or committee to give you the permissions. That eliminates the intermediaries, the institutions, the authorities. It is unacceptable for industrialists because they want to control everything.
But this has happened and this is why they don’t like influencers, because they took the jobs. Fashion on the other hand, fits with everything that has to do with the individual’s self expression. And in that way, it’s a Manifesto by Itself.
It’s self-expression and what we wear expresses our feelings, as I said.
In digital fashion, this is 100% accurate – as we cannot only create in ways that express what we want to say, but we can change all the time based on the mood, on the environment. Because in digital fashion, in digital worlds, the fashion also connects with the environment and we can change it depending on mood, depending on what we want to sell out there.
As I used to say, in an old fashion business model, your garment is hanging on a closet waiting for you to give it soul, but in digital fashion your garment has already Soul.

TVA: Yes, actually, this is really fascinating about digital fashion that you can change instantly, depending also on your mood. So I can wear black and then I can do dots on it or stripes, and change almost instantly.
I mean if the technology evolves a little bit – so for me it’s fascinating. This is part of digital fashion.
But coming back a little bit to your Manifesto, what really inspired it? Usually manifestos are quite short, but you have a very elaborate one, and nicely written, so I kept thinking what is behind it when you write it, what inspired you?

Costantino Roselli: The Manifesto is My Life, I never fit in the norm.
And when I was young, I thought that I had a problem, that something was going wrong with me. But as I was growing up and the internet came to give us the ability to instantly connect with everyone in the world, I saw that I am not weird… so much. But there are a lot of people like me.
I saw that you don’t need to have everything, or that it was ok that I questioned a lot; and the “what if” it was something that I put in the Manifesto, too.
So the netizens that I described in the manifesto cannot be someone that adheres to the norms and she/he creates questions and tries to solve problems, moves in their way without having any authority to respond to – because one of my values is freedom. And I try to put it into the organization, in our culture, in the business model that we have.
For example, I am not sitting even remotely on the head of a table, but we have a roundtable so everybody has an opinion. And as a business we work with our community.
So this is how the Manifesto came out. We are artists, we are strategists, we are technologists. We want to build a future world and we never ask permission to do it. We just do it.

TVA: Indeed, it is a very strong Manifesto! But, coming a little bit too to the business part, many people are asking, is digital fashion profitable? Okay, so they are the new kids that are buying all the skins for the games. But is it like digital fashion femicides profitable on? What is your business model and how do you get the revenues?

Costantino Roselli: One question: what if the guy that creates the first fax needed to send the fax? or if the first line of a car knew how to drive? So we are in the same position. The fact that we don’t have all the inputs, and all the regulations, so on.
First you need the products, the models, the communities; you do the for sale, then you put Pr, and a marketplace.
When I started in 2019 I put an ad by saying that I need to work with some designers in 3D. People around the world came, and right now I have a community of 3500 designers, influencers and developers and we work together to build the future.
So if you ask me if it’s profitable, do I care about that? No.
I would like to create something that is really amazing. And I know that the world is gonna be there.
10 years from now, everybody will have an avatar, at least – I have 15 right now. And life is that serious, it’s about beauty and fun. As we get rid of all the problems that industrial control gave us, then we will realize that we have to take back ourselves and this world gives us the freedom to do that.
I have revenues right now because we sell fashion in Fortnite and Roblox but this is just a small thing of what netizens want to do.
The business model that we create is completely different from what we know about business entities right now. We work on projects, and every project is like a small company. We tokenize every project and we don’t hire people.
We don’t make people slaves. We work in the community, with the community, for the community, which means that we go to the community and we say “okay, we have this project, who wants to jump on it?”
We calculate how we evaluate this project, and the profits of this project, but the profit might not come for two or three years from now; and then the people they have tokens like a service and we serve all this equally.
And we are not working like before – when you had the brand and the consumers and a bridge between them. We turned down the bridge, and we take the brand and put it in consumers and we make the consumers which means the community the first adopters, and they are co-creating with us and they are partners to us and we help them to try out new things, and this is the most important aspect.

TVA: Okay, now I’m curious what type of projects do you have and co-create with the community?
Costantino Roselli: We definitely work on open AI projects – we started working on this in 2020 – we have projects focused on interoperability, ownership.
We have a project about the 3Dworld – weIn addition, we want to build a 3D world that will work like a place that connects B2C, the creator and customers without eliminating any intermediary, a place where people will have fun and are able to co-create. And because of this work, we will connect all the other projects that we work on right now individually. For example, the AI project will be there as a helper.
We will try to create a community, let’s say a nation in the cloud, and people go there, have fun, have a great experience, trade, do their jobs or what they need and when they disconnect they enjoy the physical world as it is because we have a beautiful world.

TVA: And because you talked about AI, till now we talked about digital fashion in 2D, virtual fashion in 3D, but AI is really starting to move into fashion. How do you see the mixture between AI and virtual fashion?

Costantino Roselli: I don’t understand why we have so much hype about AI or we have hype about everything because though those things are inevitable.
I mean, we asked for some evolutions to happen to us 20 or 40 years ago, and we wanted them to happen, and it happens right now.
So I don’t understand the surprise of people saying “AI is coming, we’re gonna lose our jobs” and things like this. But there is a point to losing our jobs because we create things that make our life easier and better. AI will do the same to us, to make our life better. And we should work with many, many things. What we see right now is a glimpse of an AI, of what is coming.
The Metaverse for example is not what you see right now. It’s just this is a glance what we have right now. And the same is true for AI – what we do is more to test right now.
The companies that create AI put their development out there for the people to test, and in the future it will develop more and more what we have now.
Of course for fashion, it will also be a great combination. It will work like the music industry.
We had first Napster and we killed the Napster and then iTunes came that changed the game. And right now we also have Spotify. We can take a MacBook and just a microphone or any instrument and we can write music in our living room and then we can upload it to iTunes or wherever we want. And today we have more music, more musicians and we have fantastic time with our friends.
But the only industry impacted by these evolutions was the record labels. And it will happen the same with fashion.
The organizations and institutions of fashion will lose everything that they have – AI will impact the fashion industry as Spotify and iTunes impacted music. We will have more creativity, we will have more fashion, we will have more customers and more consumers, so be sure that only the organization of the system will be impacted by AI.

TVA: Definitely, the AI will have its say, as you say. But if we go back in time to the start of digital fashion, it is clear that the gaming industry and gamers were the first adapter, as gamers needed skins. But as we are evolving more to live in the 3D spaces, I think it will be clear that some people will prefer to have more outfits, even haute couture, others not – like in the physical environment.
But besides that, do you see other use cases for digital fashion, how do you see the potential to develop?

Costantino Roselli: Moving into digital fashion, in the Metaverse, the terminology and definitions will change.
We will not have haute couture as we have in the physical world, because right now if you go in a virtual environment you can buy with 60 euros, the whole Gucci collection. It is not the price that makes it exclusive.
But you have creativity.
So it’s completely different how we have to define luxury, haute- couture and everything else in the Metaverse.
The gamers are the early adopters actually because they used to do that, but not necessarily connect with fashion.
What happens in the metaverse, inside digital worlds, how the people use their avatars, fashion and everything is connected with two words: storytelling and gamification. If you don’t use it, if you don’t have a curiosity of moving there with games with a story, if you don’t have a purpose, if you don’t want to be a hero or to jump on the digital world – right now we do whatever we want in streamline.
But the business doesn’t have the same role when you have the web3 when we have the metaverse, otherwise you don’t need it. It’s about having an immersive experience instead of an interactive experience, only.
Right now you go on vacation, you take some pictures, and you upload it and broadcast your pictures to your friends. Before the internet era, you took the pictures, you sent the pictures to the store, the Store gave you the pictures after one week. And then you invited a few people in your living room for dinner and showed them the album. And after it came the Instagram broadcasting, but right now you have immersiveness.
That means you could choose your own role, and you’re gonna leave it inside the Metaverse. And if you don’t want to play the actor, you can have the ability to choose the flow of the story. You can choose the plot because for example, and say that a certain hero could do something specific, a certain role. And then the people that create the stories, they allow you to do that. This is something that we already work on. The common people are going to be an actor’s on the same avatar, on the same field. And it is going to be everywhere, not only in fashion or in gaming or whatever it is going to be everywhere.

TVA: I think that that is a strong statement. Actually. I wanted to ask at a certain point like how do you see the future of digital fashion but I think that you answered it brilliantly now that it’s gonna be everywhere.

This is the NTZNS manifesto that describes the mindset of NTZNS and the philosophy on which they build a culture for all people who embrace the digital lifestyle, not as just any other job, but as the door that leads to human evolution.

Be a Ronin. Master a number of skills and use them to serve a purpose of your choice. 

A Samurai is a servant under their master’s commands. Therefore he serves his masters’ agenda. A Ronin is a samurai without a master. A warrior without a king who chooses to dedicate their skills to serving the people. A Ronin never asks for approval, command or to give them the authority to do something. They are not waiting for someone to pick them. They pick themselves, always.

Be weird. The mass is boring. Fitting in makes you invisible and ignored. Weird is where the fun begins. The noise, the challenge, the life itself. More about NTZNS manifesto on Netizens page https://ntzns.com/ntzns-manifesto/

As we have become accustomed at the end of the interview, TECHVANGART asked some SHOT-Crazy Questions

TVA: Who is the Weirdo and who is the Ronin that inspired your Manifesto? You said that the Manisfesto was inspired by you, you are both? 

Costantino Roselli: Yes. I am both 🙂  I’m Weirdo and I’m Ronin. I decided to become Ronin in 2013. I jumped out from a big conglomerate; I actually was a ‘golden boy’, as I had a great position and then I jumped out of the trains. And become a Ronin, trying to find my own tribe. And I am Weirdo too. In 2015, I created a Digital branding company. And it was the first time that they use avatars for personas that they collaborate with people with your social media manager, for example. 

TVA: The ‘must-have’ digital fashion garments or accessory is….

Costantino Roselli: Actually, there’s not only one, because there are all emotions and all of your identities are the roles that you have in your head.

TVA: The future of AI-Stylist for digital fashion will be….

Costantino Roselli: They will be the new influencers

TVA: And the book that the one book that you will say it’s a must read

Costantino Roselli: Last year I uploaded on Instagram 31 books. But, if I can say 2 books that define me as personality, in my business, and everything:
Icarus deception by Seth Godin
A war of art by Steven Pressfield

TVA: The human world is collapsing, you have the possibility to run away, to another planet, and take only 3 objects with you. What would you take?

Costantino Roselli: …escape to another Planet? I’m feeling right now that I would say the one thing it would be a pencil in the papers just to write down things and everything. The other one could be seeds from a tree and a little bit of water to put for the seeds, so that will create food and maybe a new life. Something like that. I don’t know.

TVA: Because you asked for a long time in the fashion industry, what is the worst digital outfit that you will have seen?

Costantino Roselli: Okay, let’s define worse. I will tell you a story. Vogue magazine selects only one photo for the cover of the magazine, one photo from 15 photos that Mario Testino put in front of them. And Mario Testiona said that Vogue chose that photo he liked the least.
So, for Mario Testiono it was the worst, for Vogue it was the best. And for us, it’s the best because it’s Mario Testino.
So depending on how you see the worst. I don’t believe that they are ugly outfits. I just believe that there are creations and creations and works that should be done as stepping stones to lead you where you are right now as a creator.
When you start to create digital fashion and you put it out there and you are criticized – don’t be afraid to deliver whatever you want. Because when somebody says that is not so good, you can always say “okay, I can hear you. I accept it. I will come back with something better”.
This is the most important thing: to always come back with something better, not for them, But for you firstly, and for the community that you want to serve. Not for the masses, but for the community that you serve. This is a point.

We Are All Netizens – Wear All NTZNS. The future of fashion is digital!

ABOUT NTZNS

Starting as a multi-brand 3D Digital Fashion retail store, ntzns helps 3D fashion designers sell their collections to people who want to create their digital fashion wardrobe. NTZNS is a multi-brand digital fashion platform that connects 3D digital fashion creators directly with their audience (digital fashion collectors, influencers, content creators, gamers, and fashion lovers).

NeTiZeNS is a lifestyle, a provocative futuristic mindset. Digital Fashion is the key to what comes next. We are more, never less.

All photos are copyrighted by NTZNS and may be used by the press only for the purpose of news or editorial coverage