The NFT craze has reached the high fashion industry. Our chart with data gathered by Statista gives an overview of different NFT sales by luxury and collectable brands, some of them bringing in millions.
A very lucrative NFT sale was launched by Italian fashion house Dolce & Gabbana. Collezione Genesi – bringing in more than $6 million on a hybrid physical/NFT model – consisted of nine pieces. Bridging the physical aspect of fashion and metaphysical aspects of NFTs, if you will, five of the collection’s items were produced by Dolce & Gabbana the old-fashioned way and then turned into animated digital versions by studio UNXD. Buyers actually bought the physical item and the NFT together, appealing to the more traditional high-fashion clientele and explaining the high price achieved.
While NFTs normally do not come with any digital applications let alone physical renditions, the Dolce and Gabbana NFTs even have the option of having collaborator UNXD transfer the digitally animated fashion items that are part of the NFT to a metaverse of choice.
The collection Fewo Sneakers by collectable brand RTFKT – recently acquired by Nike – runs on a similar model and brought in more than $3 million. The sneakers can be worn in real life and in the Decentraland metaverse. Burberry’s items can be donned and resold in the digital party game Blankos Block Party.
Givency, Gucci and Louis Vuitton, on the other hand, went the more traditional NFT route by selling NFTs based on graphic designs from a collection, a movie featuring their fashion and a video game that they have brought to market, respectively. However, the sales proved less profitable, bringing in only around $159,000 for Givency and $25,000 for the movie NFT by Gucci.
The later examples show the initial idea behind NFTs being collectibles that base their value on an exclusivity promise by the minter. While all of the graphic designs, the movie and the game are freely available to look at and download from the internet, the collectable NFTs tied to them and written into the blockchain are unique and are only issued by the prestigious houses once, therefore guaranteeing exclusivity and suggesting an increase in value over time. When it comes to the high-fashion and sneakerheads clientele, however, some more applied physical and digital uses tied to NFT sales have helped to convince customers in the high-fashion and collectibles realm.
