Art Basel Miami Beach and Fashion Leaders experimenting with Web3 technologies

Vogue Business - The annual art fair now attracts cultural and fashion leaders experimenting with Web3 technologies. With a rapt audience and more than a year of firsts, branded presentations kicked the tyres on long-term uses for NFTs and phygital goods.

The annual art fair known as Art Basel, which descends on Miami every December, has expanded into a lucrative opportunity for luxury fashion brands hoping to tap into moneyed collectors and the pop culture personalities they attract. And, as artists experiment with NFTs and Web3 denizens foster their own cult of influence, it’s only natural that the event has become a top destination for fashion’s Web3 crowd. 

Brands have spent more than a year experimenting and developing metaverse and Web3 projects, and the community has more enthusiasm (and ability) to attend physical events, so this year’s series of fashion-friendly installations, parties and promotions offered a true cross-section of how Web3 might play out in fashion’s near future. In short, it’s not limited to virtual worlds, digital goods and anonymous avatars. Prada hosted a DJ set that was open to holders of its October NFT drop; Adidas invited its community to try on its new digital designs using augmented reality; and Timex tapped the Bored Ape Yacht Club community to design a collection of limited-edition, customisable phygital timepieces — to name a few crossover partnerships.

These various approaches “just remind me of the different things traditional industries can play with”, noted Laura Rodriguez, co-founder and host of Web3 media and consulting agency The Miami Ape, who consulted on the Timex project. “Adidas showed how a huge player is using Web3 tech to stay on brand and offer different avenues of creativity.”

An art week in South Florida is also perhaps a less risky venue for experimentation than a traditional fashion week in a major fashion capital, as attendees tend to be more fluent in and forgiving of new ideas such as token-gating, AR try-on and POAPs — which all made frequent appearances throughout the week, fashion-related or otherwise. 

Community rewards

In the beginning of NFT mania, brands often distributed NFTs as a reward for doing something, such as attending a fashion show (Altuzarra) or being a member of a special app (Adidas). Now that NFTs are more common, brands are approaching the next phase in NFT ownership by rewarding loyalty — particularly those who have held onto branded NFTs. This already emerged tentatively at New York Fashion Week, but a siloed and sceptical fashion crowd translated into headwinds on actual experimentation. 

In Miami, attendees didn’t blink at token-gated entrances, which granted access to people who had collected certain NFTs. A digital fashion brunch at the Goodtime Hotel hosted by DressX and The Fabricant welcomed a line of digital fashion aficionados, who could both present an NFT to enter and receive a POAP once they did — paving the way for future rewards; perhaps next time, people with this POAP might enjoy a shorter queue?

Similarly, events for big PFP collections including Bored Ape Yacht Club and World of Women were almost entirely token-gated. “Token-gated everything,” said Arianee founder and CEO Pierre-Nicolas Hurstel at the end of the week. (Arianee worked with Vogue Business on a Member-only NFT to provide token-gating at an event in South Beach.) 

Prada invited holders of its October Timecapsule NFT drop (which paired a luxury, limited-edition shirt with an artsy NFT) to join celebrities, CEOs and influencers at the Faena Forum for “Prada Extends”, an event curated by electronic musician and Prada collaborator Richie Hawtin, also known as “Plastikman”, among other aliases. (Prada previously invited a Crypted community member to attend an elaborate experience during Milan Fashion Week.) It’s worth noting that many in the crowd were wearing Prada, but most had not been able to get their hands on the October Crypted drop, because they sell so fast, according to multiple attendees — which is admittedly not a terrible outcome for the brand.

An emphasis on physical and digital

The community rewards expanded beyond access to physical events to include physical goods and, naturally, face-to-face meetings. Attendees at the World of Women gala — whose awards ceremony included an award for digital fashion design — were treated to a surprise performance from electronic duo Sofi Tukker. Digital fashion and design was an important element because World of Women “recognises digital identity, through fashion and design, should be portable, customisable and represent each user’s full digital footprint in Web3 and beyond," says World of Women partnerships manager Diana-Luk Ye. Plus, she notes, World of Women is the first female-centric NFT brand to break through to the mainstream, so it’s important to empower digital identity in new ways.

Balmain introduced a metaverse world and project with visual artist Alexandre Arrechea inspired by the 1950s-era Villa Balmain; digital animations are paired with physical masks made of Swarovski crystals. 

Meanwhile, a Timex party on the roof of South Beach’s Moxy Hotel invited fans and holders of the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT to meet each other while previewing the new collection of Bored Ape-themed watches (also token-gated), which come with an AR wearable. Some community members were attending a BAYC event for the first time. Rodriguez, of The Miami Ape, was one of the advisors on the project; she requested gold details and a smaller watch face and Ape, which appealed more to her aesthetic, for a piece that contains her owned intellectual property. (BAYC offers holders full commercial rights.) 

9dcc, the phygital, Web3 fashion brand from influencer and investor Gmoney, explicitly rewarded its community for networking; in addition to a new white T-shirt, it incentivised holder-wearers to distribute POAPs to others throughout the week, via NFC chips embedded in the shirts. (Gmoney has trademarked the concept of networked products to this end.) People at events including Timex’s lunch and a dinner for its timepieces were spotted wearing new white 9dcc shirts — subtle, but “if you know, you know”, as Gmoney says.

Rtfkt displayed physical versions of its Nike co-branded Space Drip sneakers (sold as digital collectibles that people can “forge” physically, including an NFC chip) at a Web3 exhibition space in downtown Miami called The Gateway created by news site NFT Now, where exhibitors included Instagram, Gmoney and Christie’s.

Web3 is not crypto

With the downturn of crypto and the collapse of crypto exchange FTX, one might expect a dip in morale. While holders and traders joked about tanking values, fashion developers and investors positioned the time as a cleansing of the industry that emphasized the push for decentralization, and differentiated cryptocurrencies from wider Web3 use cases.

Fashion-focused investment group Red DAO founding member Megan Kaspar hosted a digital-fashion-focused brunch, during which Metaverse Fashion Week head Gigi Graziosi Casimiro announced the next iteration of MVFW on 28-31 March, this time expanding beyond its origins on virtual real estate platform Decentraland, and with an emphasis on giving brands more time and help to develop a presence. This year, Kaspar says, the “asset class” is experiencing two shifts: a differentiation between centralized and decentralized finance (known as DeFi), and the risks associated with giving ownership to centralized third parties. “NFTs as speculative investment assets, versus on-chain consumer products, are beginning to diverge,” Kaspar says, adding that it is “imperative for luxury fashion brands to establish on-chain product channels, rather than using NFT tech for one-off marketing campaigns”. She noted that 9dcc, whose physical products are tied to on-chain smart contracts, proves the market is ready for digital twins.

Digital fashion platform DressX co-founder Natalia Modenova spoke about how much brand sentiment had improved in terms of digital fashion awareness, while co-founder Daria Shapovalova shared how digital fashion is like the new lipstick — in other words, a new entry-level product that might be a fan’s first branded product.

Still, there’s room for more long-term brand participation. While many in the Web3 fashion community appreciated a formal brand presence — Enara Nazarova, VP of metaverse studio Hype, commended the quality of events for the Web3 fashion community — founder of Web3 fashion consortium The Fashion DAO Nico Fara called for more brand participation that expanded beyond marketing, and Ann Claes, the co-founder of digital fashion network Mutani, hoped for more presence from the creators doing the work. “There were too few creators and creatives — they need a platform and would be adding an interesting conversation,” Claes says.

If anything, this week’s events served as sufficient inspiration for pairing physical fashion designers with 3D designers to “make insane wearables”, says Patricia Gloum, filmmaker and creative director of experimental ad agency Braw Haus.

“We will see much more along this line in 2023,” predicts Holly Wood, founder, and CEO of Web3 advisory agency Hollywoodlabs.io, who worked on the recent Givenchy and Bstroy NFT drop with creative collective Felt Zine. “Co-creation, collaboration, and community are the three C’s that will unlock Web3.”