Bella Hadid is the latest celebrity to join the NFT game. In partnership with reBASE, Hadid has released a huge range of art pieces based on her images. They’re called CY-B3LLA. These artworks can be purchased and owned, with them becoming digital collectibles and tokens for some of her biggest fans.
In an interview with Vogue Magazine, Hadid explained why she decided to create NFTs and how she went about the process of making these unique images that use her likeness while depicting her as a cyborg queen. “My alias when I was 18, when I started traveling for work, was Princess Peach,” she said, discussing her love of video games, in particular, Mario. “Over quarantine, my dream was to be a full gamer girl and play other people. When the NFT craze came, I was genuinely curious about what that community looked like. It went from gaming—me wanting to create this cool avatar and be in that universe and connect with people—to this.”
The artworks were created by submitting herself to 3D scans that artists would later use to make their prints. “There were probably 200 cameras surrounding me and I stood in the middle and changed my shape so it got all these different parts of my body, different versions of my facial expressions, fingers, toes. We wanted it to be very realistic,” she said.
What makes Hadid’s product different than other NFTs on the market is its emphasis on community. According to Hadid, the purchase of these products would then result in invitations to take part in digital and in-person meet-ups with her in attendance. “We’re gonna set up different events. Tokyo—I hope that’s one of our first launch spaces. It’d be an airdrop essentially: If you’re in Tokyo having coffee and all of a sudden I’m right next door to you, you’d get a ping,” she says. “Just going to different places I love and seeing the people who support me and giving them a real hug.”
NFTs have experienced an inordinate amount of ups and downs over the past year. While Hadid understands why some people would be skeptical of yet another celebrity making their own NFTs, she claims her project is born out of passion and not out of wanting to make more money. “To me, it’s so much bigger than that. I want it to be a collective,” she said. “I want to be used as a vessel for communication and respect and love.”
