Prada, Jason Wu and Gucci too. Major luxury brands are offering exclusive access to fashion shows and events to holders of their NFTs—a practice called “token-gating”—that could change the front row and serve as a new rope of velvet.
“Increasingly, token-connected experiences will be the thing for 2023,” said Arianee chief executive Pierre-Nicolas Hurstel.
For the past several seasons, Arianee has handled NFTs for Paris Fashion Week, linking them to official accreditations.
Prada and Jason Wu have already added September fashion week tickets to their marks; Gucci held a private cocktail party in New York last June for their SuperGucci and Gucci Grail NFT holders.
Arianee has previously worked with IWC and YSL watches, and is currently working with several other brands to create specialized experiences that will take place during the upcoming fashion weeks in September or January.
Brands are looking at what they can do during PFW using official NFTs. “This will open up an amazing range of possibilities and then create a foundation, an asset for the brand to create experiences,” said Hurstel.
As PFW attendees build their portfolio from season to season and throughout the years of checks that come with it, brands can select communities of people and give them access to on-the-ground experiences — otherwise known as “parties ” in ordinary language. Brands can also see the social graph of who has attended past events and guests have proof they were there.
The data can help brands quickly scale their NFT programs while figuring out how to bridge the gap between the Internet and IRL. Plus, pairing an NFT with an event is a way to “cut the noise” when it feels like a new collection or collaboration is being announced every day, Hurstel said.
“Brands must navigate the journey between current market noise, current utility, and the purpose and integrity of NFT. Because jpegs of images on the web are one thing, but if it leads to a physical item, there’s an opportunity,” said Sean Pattwell, chief executive of CW8 Communications, which advises luxury companies on NFT and Web3 strategy. coveted are one added value and coveted invitations are another.
“If you have an NFT and it gives you some level of access to experiences and a community, that’s pretty amazing,” Pattwell said.
Courtesy of DressX
Traditionally the fashion industry has been exclusive, with shows only open to insiders, although a massive shift in the guest list has already taken place. Hurstel said the brands he works with have noted that shows used to be 10 percent consumer-driven, and are now 80 percent consumer-driven as the number of industry buyers has declined. They’ve been replaced by influencers and celebrities who stream live, and tracks are purpose-built for Instagram.
The NFT approach is the next possible step in that evolution.
“These kinds of unlocking experiences are what’s really exciting. It’s a way to create something meaningful for your core consumers and actually build relationships with new audiences,” said Pattwell. “A lot of people who are in the crypto world, they’re a new network and they have new resources and they want to be able to spend them. Being able to learn about the fashion industry, whether it’s attending a party or going to a fashion show or being invited to a digital experience — that’s really interesting and innovative and completely different.”
Brands will focus on building community and value for users who shop.
“There will be a race between different brands to articulate what their community is, what their community stands for and what its purpose and goal is. You will see in the next couple of months, more and more brands come out, explaining what the benefits are of holding one of their NFTs.”
Token-gating may be the new normal — at least until NFTs are widely adopted and have their value as collectibles, Hurstel said. “It’s a great way to deliver value, and you have to make up for the fact that you can’t get the most value out of an NFT today because the infrastructure and user agent aren’t fully built and distributed. So you have to compensate by giving benefits.”
Hurstel predicts that this will change as quickly as the market has moved from heavy crypto wallets to something accessible to the average shopper. “What will change tremendously in the next 24 months is the level of user interface for anyone to be able to own an NFT,” he said.
While this summer has been the “crypto winter” of falling prices, disappearing values and well-publicized wallet thefts, luxury brands are still betting on the future.
“Fashion brands aren’t looking at this from crypto price speculation, they’re just looking at this as a new way to engage with new audiences and what kind of community they want to build,” Pattwell said. “You can focus on NFT, but it’s really not about NFT, it’s about the community, and the community is where it all happens.”
“If you don’t nurture and build a digital community and keep communicating with them, bring them things they care about, they’re going to lose interest and abandon ship,” he added. “So it’s really important for every brand to think about its sustainability. It can’t be one and done.”
