Memetics of fashion design: house codes
Fashion brands that have maintained relevance and cultural status through different decades often depend on historical craftsmanship, timeless design or inimitable origin stories. Their rich heritage usually results in a set of “house codes”: design principles or visual identifiers that remain consistent throughout their history and despite changes in creative leadership. House codes can be logos, patterns, colours, materials and more. These are used as a foundation to reinvent or reinterpret the brand for a contemporary audience.
Logos and brand marks are the most obvious examples of house codes to the everyday person, such as the Louis Vuitton monogram pattern or Gucci’s green-red-green stripe. House codes can also be more subtle in their distinctiveness. A recent example is Margiela (founded in 1988), which has become recognised for its tabi boots, four white stitches, decortique technique and embrace of anonymity, among others.
These house codes provide a memetic quality that maintains continuity for a brand’s designers over time, but also a familiarity and awareness to attract brand loyalty with its customers/community. Virgil Abloh understood and utilised the power of this for Off-White by establishing a visual language in his early collections that was common to see in the outside world.
He redefined what a house code could be for the internet generation, from repeated comments of bullseye emojis on Instagram through to retweeting photos uploaded of pedestrian crossings. I’ve previously written about how his retweets “legitimised the association [with the brand], encouraged the content and reinforced the image[s] as part of the brand identity. This allowed people to participate and adopt the visual language without needing to own a high-priced item, while spreading Virgil’s ideas and designs to a wider audience.”
House codes for the onchain generation
A similar approach to brand building is emerging for the onchain generation, led by Higher, but with roots in the Nouns ecosystem. Nouns pioneered decentralised meme proliferation through cc0 with its art and a unicode symbol (⌐◨-◨), which Seneca argues is “the only viable rails to allow IP to travel and evolve at internet speed.” Higher created its canon, open-sourced its art and popularised its own unicode symbol (↑), but the internet speed was accelerated through a surprise airdrop of the $higher token to active members in its channel on Farcaster. Like Virgil previously, the visual (and literal) language of higher is common to see in the online world (especially in crypto) and continues to build momentum through community coordination.
The arrows, a shade of green and now maybe a goat are a collection of house codes that are being shared amongst the community to transform the creative direction. Powered by tools from Party, Titles, Uplink and more, other emerging brands like Based Management and 747 Airlines are developing a new niche for the Base ecosystem together with Higher.
up only - if we just hold and believe, we will make more money
higher together - if we work together and are optimistic, we can accomplish anything
it's higher together ↑
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A higher vision of the future of fashion
Unsurprisingly, there have been requests and speculation for Higher to evolve into a decentralised fashion brand with its own physical apparel based on the existing house codes. Overcoming the cold start problem for a direct-to-consumer fashion brand used to be through building a social media following (that doesn’t always convert) and/or pre-orders. Higher is potentially a proof-of-concept for using a memecoin (or scenecoin) to start a fashion brand. The brand could already be considered luxury. Community members are co-creating an onchain mood board through Zora that’s reminiscent of JJJJound’s Tumblr and Hidden’s Instagram. Merch has been organised by core contributors and independently released by community members.
Not everything in the /higher channel on Farcaster or on Zora is of the same taste level though. Previous experiments to crowdsource creativity led to average results aesthetically when across a large enough sample of people. This can be even more challenging for fashion when making decisions beyond artworks, such as sizing, silhouettes and style. “Brands will need to be much more composable in the future, whilst still being clear on what’s fixed about their brand and what’s flexible for people to play with,” suggested Rosalind Bull in an interview with Tyler Scharf of Crowdmuse, “It still has to look like a collection. Community ownership greater than the individual parts is what incentivises contribution.” As Higher continues to capture attention and potentially risk brand dilution, it invites the opportunity for more innovation to overcome these challenges. Potential mechanisms could include:
continuing to test a variety of retro funding initiatives
applying learnings from BottoDAO to introduce a form of token-gated curation that spotlights community-endorsed contributions
defining new house codes for patterns, materials and more.
Even without physical products, Higher is a vision for the future of fashion. PFP NFTs have frequently been referenced as an example of digital fashion, but memecoins have been overlooked as the onchain proxy for accessories. Within a fashion collection there is usually a range of products at different price points targeting different consumers. There are apparel or bags at a higher price in comparison to scarves or perfumes at a lower price. The more affordable categories increase access without diluting the premium of more desirable items. Memecoins provide access as anyone can start with a fraction of a token, which ensures it will always play a critical role in a suite of offerings from any brand. This is instead of the significant amount of liquidity often required to purchase from a top NFT collection with a limited supply (e.g. multiple ETH for one Noun per day). There is also limited, if not zero, value accrual that exists for contributions by non-NFT holders to these communities, so memecoins also make it easier to unlock incentive alignment.
liquidity (as means of transfer)
entry unit (1 $[memecoin] > 1 NFT)
easier to speculate on & therefore brings more attention (potential community)
memes are CC0 & not IP gated
Li Jin articulated the opportunity best: “The user shifts from the product that is being sold by a platform, to the owner of a unit of attention that has value and can appreciate over time.” The user can increase the attention captured in that unit by themselves. An inspired token holder who is empowered with house codes creates the necessary conditions for meme proliferation (attention), value accrual and therefore loyalty. Higher is the start of a movement that can supersede the concept of streetwear for something more expressive of the digital native consumer. People want to tell a story or be a part of something, whether it’s a status symbol, logomania or an indie band t-shirt, and memecoins as digital accessories already make it possible.
token + house codes + creator tools = higher
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