A decade ago, Nike took a proverbial jump into the future of sneakers with their launch of Nike Mag — a fictional concept shoe inspired by the flick Back to the Hereafter Role II.

The 1,500 limited edition was so revered for its idiosyncratic self-lacing pattern that it wrote itself into sneaker folklore as i of the greatest productions of all time.

From the moment legendary eighty's hip-hop trio Run-DMC unified the crowd in raising aloft their Adidas shoes to the sound of "My Adidas," to the debut of basketball'southward virtually iconic wearing apparel — the "notorious" Air Jordan — sneakers have get a prominent feature of the fashion culture's pursuit for esteem and reverence.

In these times of visual exuberance, it would have been outlandish to suggest that upon purchasing a shoe of this calibre, the buyer would not receive the actual shoe.

And still, fast frontwards to today, and that's exactly where nosotros find ourselves.

What has throughout history been solely conceived to exist a tangible asset that one can touch, wear and showcase has undergone a cultural metamorphosis and is now inbound virtual landscapes birthed upon blocks and nodes.

Moving picture of the RTFKT 10 NZXT sneaker collab. Source: RTFKT.

RTFKT Studios (pronounced "artifact") is an aggressive project at the forefront of futuristic fashion in the metaverse.

The collective operated quietly for years, working with selective gaming companies and mode brands until their unveiling to the public sphere in early 2022.

Founded by Chris Le, Benoit Pagotto and Steven Vasilev, RTKFT utilizes emerging technologies such as game engines, nonfungible tokens (NFTs), blockchain hallmark and augmented reality to create immersive virtual and physical sneakers, every bit well as augmented reality-, or AR-, integrated collectibles.

The project has experienced social growth over the past twelve months, boasting collaborations with the likes of Jeff Staples and Janet Jackson, besides as digital collectible drops in gaming metaverses The Sandbox and Decentraland.

In add-on, the team benefited from an $8 million funding raise in May 2022 from notable figures Andreessen Horowitz, Mike Novogratz's Galaxy Digital and Dapper Labs CEO Roham Gharegozlou, among others.

Also as virtual products, RTFKT has executed two forging events or initiatives that grant holders the opportunity to redeem the physical reciprocal of their NFT possession.

For a behind-the-scenes expect into RTFKT'southward upcoming ventures, every bit well as a perspective on the wider adoption of NFT fashion civilisation, Cointelegraph spoke to the co-founder and chief creative officer of RTFKT Studios, Chris Le.

Pre-RTFKT, Chris' career included gaming designs, graphic design work for music labels Def Jam and Sony, music video directing for artists such as Ty Dolla Sign and Anderson .Paak, and directing and editing credits for two Netflix movies starring Danny Trejo.

This Zoom interview has been condensed to suit reading constraints.

Cointelegraph: Chris, thanks for joining united states of america today. What's your current office at RTFKT and what projects are you focusing on?

Chris Le: I'm the co-founder and principal creative officer at RTKFT. Day-to-24-hour interval, I manage a team of artists and conceptualize sneaker designs. If I feel like getting my hands dirty, I'll model the 3D sneakers, do all the rendering and brand the NFT's out of them.

To be honest, I don't even consider myself a sneaker designer, I never had that appetite. What'due south funny is that when I vicious into it, I was insanely happy because I was able to use my by skill-sets from video games and the moving picture industry: designing corrective items for Dota ii, weapon skins for Counter-Strike Global Defensive, visual furnishings for fantasy movies on Netflix and more.

Traditionally, sneaker designers are trained from the automotive industry. That's why many sneakers have sleek designs like cars. However, I feel that my background gave me a different perspective from other designers.

CT: Y'all recently collaborated with NZXT on an augmented-reality sneaker. Knowing that Facebook has but launched their outset VR glasses with Ray-Ban and Snapchat is working on a similar product, what exercise you think are the current capabilities and limitations of AR, and how do you see this space evolving?

CL: I'g a huge supporter of AR, VR and XR. The engine capabilities are not all the mode there nonetheless for ultra-realism, just starting to become at that place with VR, and those engines will exist able to translate to AR.

Some of our filters you can wear the sneaker on your foot, or habiliment a jacket, but information technology's not yet perfect. At the moment, it'due south NFT-native crypto enthusiasts who are into AR and users of Snapchat and TikTok who employ face filters for content purposes.

Where nosotros want AR to exist mainstream is real-life utility. I don't retrieve it will become extremely mainstream just nonetheless, just it will. With 100% confidence, I know we're heading in that direction, it'due south inevitable. For the states to get there though, AR has to solve our nearly basic tech needs — navigation, phone calling, text and language translation.

Film of Chris' concept design for the Atari sneaker. Source: RTFKT

CT: There'due south an established history betwixt the fashion industry and the cultures of gaming, sports and hip-hop. Why is it important for RTFKT to interact with legacy brands such as Atari? What does that correspond?

CL: The founders of RTFKT all came from the gaming industry. In my various roles, I saw gaming become adopted past the mainstream audience. This was the aforementioned for my 2 co-founders. Benoit came from luxury fashion and and so he started working on Fnatic — one of the globe'due south biggest esports teams based in London, while Zaptio was a streetwear entrepreneur.

We understand how manner is one of the best ways to express yourself in this world, especially with everybody focusing their lives on the internet. But we ever saw some slight disconnect between luxury, streetwear and popular culture with the gaming culture.

We wanted to be one of the showtime guys to truly adopt the gaming aesthetic with streetwear and luxury. And that's what nosotros did. It'south always of import for us not to collaborate with big luxury brands. We're the luxury/street-wearable metaverse make, and then our highest priority has to be collaborating with video game companies, that would always exist number 1 over Dior, Supreme, or whoever.

The Atari collab was freaking amazing every bit they're ane of the most OG household names in the history of gaming, and it was sick to be well received.

CT: And you've done collaborations with music artists too, right?

CL:We decided that if we were always going to do a collaboration with a music artist, it would have to be with someone insanely legendary. That's why we chose Janet Jackson. As of now, that's the only music creative person we'll drib something with until nosotros decide to expand our horizon into that area.

Related: NFTs could mark a resurgence in art galleries

CT: Tell us virtually your Atari collectible drib in Decentraland.

CL:Yeah, with the Atari collaboration, we dropped 1,000 wearables in Decentraland. To exist honest, I think we almost crashed their servers. Haha!

At that place were loads of people in the little kiosk where you lot had to press the push button to go the drop, and anybody was just jamming this sucker trying to get gratuitous RTKFT Akari sneakers!

And we programme to announce more things similar that in the time to come.

We want to exist the brand of the metaverse. Nosotros desire RTKFT to be the most recognizable make — not just in the physical realm, but in every universe and world that people populate in the future. A person should exist able to become into 1 VR game and see RTFKT, hop into an AR game and see RTKFT, and so into a PC game and run across the states over again.

CT: And would you lot e'er consider creating a shop/shop in a metaverse like Decentraland?

CL:Aye, nosotros have intentions of doing that too.

Picture of an unreleased avatar from CloneX. Source: RTFKT

CT: Permit's talk well-nigh CloneX — the highly-predictable iii-dimensional avatar profile motion-picture show (PFP) projection launching on the Ethereum blockchain in mid-October. There volition be 20,000 unique avatars, one-half of which volition exist allocated to the pre-sale for existing RTFKT holders at a mint price of 0.05 ETH, while the other half will be opened in a Dutch sale public sale.

Accept these avatars been specifically designed for the metaverse?

CL: Oh yeah, that's the whole point. Everything we do always has some grade of utility. Besides, we e'er try to reward our RTFKT holders, and and then if yous have a previous RTFKT, they volition be usable on the avatars.

You know how Marvel'southward cinematic universe ties all the movies back together again into the Avengers? It'due south like that. If you were with united states of america from the kickoff, you'll see that information technology all led up to this. You tin can wear all your RTFKT'southward on your grapheme.

Merely, here's where it gets crazier. Imagine you become an avatar and it has a shirt, that'south forgeable. Imagine it has a necklace, also forgeable. Whatsoever the avatar is wearing is forgable as a existent physical practiced but like we did with the Jeff Staples and Punk sneakers.

That'southward the most insane, crazy utility I've ever seen for a contour-picture projection. Information technology goes back to our vision, nosotros want to bridge the mainstream audience from the concrete realm where they currently be to the metaverse gaming digital scene.

And these characters volition exist used in unlike metaverses like Decentraland with wearables and other stuff. Also, we take a bunch of different partners nosotros haven't announced nevertheless. It's going to keep growing and that'south why there's going to exist huge utility for this project.

CT: And finally, what does the future of RTFKT look like?

CL: Ane of our ambitions is to accept our own metaverse, but that's down the road. The first steps are to go the brand that lives in every single metaverse and widely adopted on AR, VR and physicals.

We just want to be present. In everything!