Trinidad’s K2K has been innovating with their massive decks since the debut of their award-winning Carnival mid deck in 2012. Now they’ve moved into the NFT landscape and metaverse. Karen and Kathy Norman, the twin designers and investment bankers behind K2K, talk about what this means for the masses – as told to Caroline Taylor
Oyour training is in art. So, for us mas is an extension of the arts (painting, drawing, storytelling, music, theater). All our collections are very organic. We use mass as a medium to tell social commentary as well as personal stories. For us, all of our brands are an extension of our lived experiences.
When we were little girls, we were extremely excited to see Peter Minshall’s costumes in the opening ceremony at the Atlanta Olympics. As adults, the question we continue to ask ourselves is, how do we continue to elevate, innovate and evolve Carnival?
During the two-year break due to COVID-19, we had an opportunity to really rethink our strategy. We knew we really wanted to keep pushing the brand. We wanted to drive innovation. With K2K’s focus on sustainable fashion through its 365-Day Concept, the metaverse and evolution of digital avenues introduced promising new avenues for consumer engagement.
While no one fully agrees on how to perfectly define the metaverse, there is no denying that we are already witnessing its potential and the future impact it could have on society. For K2K, the metaverse is the merging of physical and digital realities, which is enabled by various immersive technologies such as AR (augmented reality), VR (virtual reality) and MR (mixed reality). While they are gateways to the metaverse, there are other avenues, which include but are not limited to blockchain technology and, by extension, Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs).
At K2K, we believe the metaverse is an extension of creative identities and digital ownership. It is a platform for trading, be it physical to virtual or virtual to physical. Ultimately, we believe that metaverse is a trading platform that will evolve over time.
Our aim is to bring our unique perspective to the digital evolution in two phases. The first phase is to develop an exclusively K2K avatar to display K2K collections. For the 2023 collection, the clothes have appeared in renditions of the K2K avatar.
The clothes in these appearances are shoppable, highlighting the transition from digital to real-world commercial activity. The aim is to bring these characters from a 3D representation to an animated form. The second phase is the curation of K2K-NFT, the world’s first NFT carnival membership experience.
The token holder gets access to exclusive social experiences and benefits. K2K-NFT represents a collection of digital membership tokens offered by K2K and is an evolution of our trading platform. It is the convergence of a digital and physical reality.
Many of us know that the NFT universe is known for its digital art component. However, what is the benefit of having only one digital asset when we all live in the real world? As a result, K2K is transforming our digital art into a physical asset.
The collection includes 2030 NFTs and is unique in that it transposes digital artwork onto a physical garment. The art features K2K’s 3D rendering of their female-led minority superhero team known as the Havoc Kru. Additionally, there are tangible real-world benefits to be enjoyed through owning K2K-NFT – unlocking additional value for the token holder in the physical world.
