The Fashion of NFT Paris
What NFT Paris revealed about the next stages of Fashion NFTs
The Naked Collector is the home of the latest news and deepest analyses of Web3 Fashion and Culture.
NFT Paris
Only a few days have passed since NFT Paris, yet, the conference has already sparked interesting thoughts and connections in me.
Here are a few of them.
Fashion Is Gaining Relevance In the Web3 Space
While Paris is one of the fashion capitals of the world, I was positively surprised by how central fashion was at NFT Paris and its side events. In my mind, the three prevailing themes of the conference were Web3 Fashion, AI Art and Web3 SaaS.
The NFT Paris panels were filled with executives from companies like Chanel, Givenchy, Shopify and Volkswagen Group.
Hearing that Web2 companies are getting into the space is comforting, yet, not completely necessary. Meaningful subcultures have rarely asked permission from the establishment, instead, they’ve usually done cool stuff. “Successful” subcultures are eventually recognized by big brands. Good examples of this were Virgil Abloh’s (and more recently Pharrell’s) appointment at Louis Vuitton and Supreme’s influence on high fashion. David Horvath (creator of Uglydoll plush toys), seconds the importance for new brands to maintain independence:
If you align with these brands [big corporations], or the 10,000 recognizable names under them, during the formative years of your character brand’s life, your character brand will likely vanish within a few years… and your brand will only last those few years because you’ll be brute-forcing it. That’s how bad it can get.
– David Horvath
I noticed that many of the fashion projects were focused on being the infrastructure layer for Web2 brands. While considered blasphemy by Web3 maxis, financially, this makes sense. This year’s obsession with Web3 CRM solutions (e.g. Arianee, Absolute Labs) largely targeting Web2 brands was very telling. This Web2-centricity is understandable given the NFT bear market, the still generally low volume of Fashion NFTs, customer confusion and AR/VR hardware lag. These create a scary environment for aspiring and existing Web3 brands. Nevertheless, I believe that cool stuff will always surface at the top of cultural relevance (thus corporate interest), no matter how niche it may be in the beginning.
The movie industry offers interesting parallels. Some of the strongest IP has been created by indie movies like Star Wars (first movie budget $11M) and Rocky (first movie budget $960K). Meanwhile, corporations like Disney seem to be running out of creative juice which results in purchasing instead of creating IP (e.g. Disney → Star Wars and Marvel).
We have to keep in mind that things like NFTs/ownership/metaverse will look drastically different depending on whether Web2 or Web3 brands get there first.
Web2 Is Tiptoeing Around Web3
On the other hand, we’re starting to see seeds of Web3 culture in Web2 companies. In the last week alone, Balmain introduced a phygital sneaker while PUMA released a 10K PFP collection.
Moreover, Louis Vuitton’s experimentation can be seen around Paris. I was able to visit Louis Vuitton's exhibition at its Paris headquarters. Interestingly, the first object to greet visitors is a faux-CryptoPunk (essentially a CryptoPunks-inspired art installation).
The second room contained the AI artist Refik Anadol’s AI Art piece. For those unfamiliar, he’s one of the pioneers of AI Art in the NFT space.
Moreover, the Louis Vuitton storefront incorporates AR in its design and functionality. You get an AR experience when interacting with the building via their app. The app also incorporates “play to earn” games where you can earn seeds (and eventually collectibles) by playing their game.
In addition to Louis Vuitton, Lacoste’s new flagship store on Champs-Élysées, Lacoste Arena, has references to Web3. On the second floor, there’s a section purely focusing on Lacoste’s UNDW3 NFT collection.
Finally, the First Lady of France, Brigitte Macron’s, visit to NFT Paris is emblematic of Web3 culture’s bleeding into the mainstream.
General Public Is Only Starting to Understand Fashion NFTs
Terms like “NFC chip”, “digital self-expression” and “generative fashion” are all familiar terms for us deep into Fashion NFTs, yet, there’s a lot of learning to be done by even the average NFT Paris attendee. Either we have to wait for these terms to click in the public’s minds or we have to obfuscate them in ways that make sense to the end user. The latter is probably the faster and shrewder path. Rebranding NFTs to “digital collectibles” won’t suffice, but is a positive sign for the recognition of this issue.
In sum, the cultural relevance of Fashion NFTs still isn’t entirely clear to the masses.
PFPs Are Still Dominating the Web3 Narrative
When it comes to NFT Paris attendee fashion, it was clear that PFP projects have the strongest hold over Web3 mindshare. NFT Paris and side event attendees were mostly donning regular clothes but if they wore Web3 fashion it was either DeGods or BAYC merch. Some other Web3 Fashion collections I saw were 9dcc, Prada Timecapsule and RTFKT. Surprisingly, RTFKT hoodies had a relatively small presence in Paris despite RTFKT’s domination of Fashion NFT trading volumes (see image below) and its roots in France. Not sure whether this can be attributed to the design, demographics or recent FUD surrounding the project. I didn’t see a lot of references to Azuki either.
Whatever people thought about the DeGods party itself, physical pieces commemorating a certain moment in time made a lot of sense, thus, resonated with the crowd.
The strength of PFPs is that they enable modular storytelling, perhaps this is part of the reason fashion projects like IoDF and Futures Factory will be introducing their own PFP collections.
Contextualizing Fashion Via Curation
Two new digital fashion projects DRAUP and Enso are exploring whether communities can form around digital fashion without PFPs.
One of DRAUP’s core tenets seems to be a highly curated community, not based on purchasing power but on merit and common interests. In fact, none of its membership passes will be sold instead they will be distributed by the community and the recipients will be vetted (not unlike y00ts). Its SALON #003 PARIS event was attended by the who’s who of Web3 Fashion and adjacent disciplines.
On the other hand, Enso is building a digital/social closet with a strong focus on curation and co-creation. It’s essentially a fashion-focused interactive social media platform built on Lens Protocol. Instead of a collective story (PFP model), each digital closet reveals a personal one.
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