Just what is dematerialised luxury fashion?
Facebook’s recent rebranding to Meta holds the conviction that our future will be increasingly spent in virtual realities. Our avatars would be able to interact, go out and shop in this virtual space, mirroring the physical world. And just like a natural progression, they would be part of our personality, and we would use them as a mean of expression. At that point clothes will be very important (because no one wants to be naked in the metaverse). But before getting caught in the matrix, can we even think of dematerialised fashion, especially for luxury brands?
Fashion luxury can be described as unreal or limitless, but clothes are still tangible products, and a shopping experience usually involves physical actions such as touching the fabric or trying on the garment. Yet, the pandemic came as a challenge for luxury brands to rethink their customer journey at distance, and explore new ways of presenting, communicating, and selling without sacrificing their meaning. It played as an accelerator to embrace the technologies while welcoming innovation.
From digital shows, to 3D immersions and gaming experience, luxury brands came with innovative ways to offer seamless experiences, building the bridge between the technologies and their communities. Thinking about it, we are already living in the metaverse — between zoom meetings, social media, internet in general — where shopping through a WhatsApp chat is part of it.
As we see the blockchain technology taken outside of the finance world, luxury brands are also experimenting with different ways to dematerialise fashion as digital assets. And NFTs appear as the most popular tool for value creation. They are convenient and profitable. Gucci’s first sneaker release with RTFKT was retailed at a price point of 10€, allowing their products to be accessible for a wider audience.
Social gaming turned out to be a profitable opportunity for Balenciaga and Fortnite, while both become more relevant to younger audiences. Dolce & Gabbana’s Haute Couture hybrid collection featured 9 NFTs, which adds a craftsmanship value to digital assets. The vision behind those projects is to glamorised blockchain technology, making it appear as invisible yet appealing.
With NFTs, Designer’s creativity can grow bigger, and have less worries about construction, fabric or costs. The technology helps to simplify the sampling process, and the final products can be infinitely replicated. It also allows to maintain a level of scarcity as quantities can be very limited. This falls within the concept of modern luxury. Also, digital ownership is a relevant innovation for exclusivity, as products are attributed an ID to prove their authenticity and provenance directly from the brand. Eventually digital garments will become just a category of product.
And in this realm of infinite opportunities, big players are not the only ones to participate in the race. We see new waves of entrepreneurs challenging the luxury status quo and creating a new reality for fashion in the virtual space.
As an example, The Dematerialised is a project for democratisation of digital fashion assets. Similar to a department store, it is a web 3 market place that specializes in authenticating digital luxury goods. They break the two dimensional barrier into a three-dimensional environment, while facilitating the process of owing a digital asset. The technological structure is simplified making it as easy as an AppStore purchase. Brands are able to present and commercialise their digital fashion through an accessible space that bridges the gap between the two worlds.
The Dematerialised is also an opportunity for emerging designers to show their creations and go into market. For their second drop, the market place teamed up with The Fabricant — another web 3 initiative that enables designers to develop digital garments, focusing more on the production process. The collection included 233 priced from 10€ to 9 000€, and was sold out in eleven minutes.
Although there are plenty of ambitious plans that could potentially change our perception of digital assets. As a short-term objective the focus seems to be on a more scalable vision. As a matter of fact, sport giant Nike has integrated digital sampling as part of their process for quite a long time now. And luxury can benefit from the advantages of those digital assets. Counterfeiting has been a big long-lasting issue for luxury brands and with the help of implementing digital certifications to each product would guarantee ownership and authenticity.
As of today, the pandemic and its consequences has pushed innovation towards undiscovered virtual worlds while the consumers’ appetite has shifted at an ever-increasing pace, reconsidering what constitutes value.
About this article
This article has been written by a student on the Grenoble Ecole de Management’s Advanced Masters in Digital Strategy Management. As part of a content creation assignment, students are given the task of writing articles based on their digital interests and disseminate the articles online. Articles are marked but we make minimal changes to the content. Thanks for reading! James Barisic, Programme Director, MS DSM.
