Did Nicolas Ghesquière Predict the Beeple Boom?

On the 16th of February, Mike Winklemann, the digital artist better known as Beeple, sold his Everyday Series as a non-fungible token at Christie’s for $69 million. Since then, just about everyone – from Jack Dorsey to Damien Hirst to Kate Moss – has launched their own NFT. But while celebrity cash grabs continue to proliferate, there is still a lot of confusion about what an NFT actually is and what they might mean for the fashion industry.

Put simply, an NFT is a certificate of ownership, stored on a digital ledger called a blockchain, which has given rise to a new market for digital collectibles. One of its biggest advantages is that it can guarantee the uniqueness of a digital asset that would otherwise be infinitely reproducible. It’s the technology that allowed the 18-year-old artist Fewocious to release a line of virtual sneakers that sold for $3.1 million last month. But fashion and NFTs have a longer history than you might think. Take,for instance, Nicolas Ghesquière’s inclusion of Beeple’s work in the SS19 collection for Louis Vuitton,long before the artist was the topic du jour. In reality, fashion has been experimenting with digital clothing and accessories for years now, and many of the characteristics of the NFT space – from the language used to the kinds of assets traded – derive directly from the luxury fashion playbook.

Before NFTs, innovations in the gaming industry had already given rise to a lucrative market for digital fashion. The emergence of the freemium model, where users access games for free with the option of purchasing in-game add-ons, has created new opportunities for brands to access digital consumers. Fortnite, the incredibly popular free-to-play computer game which touts Travis Scott and Drake as fans, makes huge profits by selling digital outfits called skins. And with gaming continuing to dwarf the global film industry in annual revenue, fashion companies have been forced to take notice of the rising trend for in-game purchases.

Lucy Yeomans, the ex Global Content Director at Net-A-Porter, was quick to spot a gap in the market when she developed DREST in 2019, a game that allows users to style digital avatars in the latest products from real fashion brands. The idea is that players can ‘experience’ luxury items before purchasing them in real life, blurring the lines between digital and physical identities. Yeomans maintains that games are the perfect way to introduce the otherwise inaccessible world of fashion to a younger audience, grooming a new generation of consumers. With Gucci and Moschino releasing capsule collections for The Sims, it’s clear that companies are betting big on the gamification of retail as a strategy to attract new customers and render luxury goods more accessible.

For those of you not willing to shed your real-life identities for an avatar, companies like The Fabricant, a “digital-only” fashion house, have developed virtual clothing that you can actually wear – with the help of Augmented Reality technology. When The Fabricant sold a virtual dress for $9,500 as an NFT in 2019, Forbes referred to it as the first “digital only blockchain clothing”. Images of the dress worn by its owner, Mary, can be found on The Fabricant’s website, alongside evangelical claims that digital clothing is the perfect way to combat fashion’s over-consumption problem. Why buy a new skirt when posing in a virtual one is enough?

The Fabricant designs clothes for a future where everyone will wear lenses that allow them to see their virtual possessions. They’re not alone. Gucci recently dropped a pair of ‘virtual sneakers’ for between $8.99-$12.99 with the AR platform Wanna. Once purchased, simply point your phone at your feet and the obnoxious neon sneakers will magically appear, like a face filter on Instagram.

While the project was largely ridiculed in the mainstream fashion press, Gucci is doing more than any other high-fashion brand to court the new class of crypto wealth, a strategy that might prove profitable in a community that rewards early adopters. They’ve just announced an NFT collaboration with Neuno, a soon-to-launch digital fashion platform developed with Dapper Labs, the team whose 2017 project, CryptoKitties, pioneered the NFT as we know it.

Despite all the hype, NFTs aren’t just about digital swag; they offer brands an opportunity to forge lasting connections with consumers. In the near future, it’s far more likely that NFTs will be used to offer customers rolling benefits rather than attention-grabbing virtual items. One of the biggest advantages of the NFT is that it isn’t a static asset. By being modified and updated, it gives brands a new channel to provide unique services and content – whether that be an exclusive podcast or early access to a collection. Instead of a one-time purchase, an NFT can operate like a subscription model without the recurring cost, creating exclusive digital communities that resemble members clubs. How fashion brands will choose to capitalise on these benefits remains to be seen.