Off to the metaverse of fashion – your SZ

“We are redefining luxury,” said Cédric Charbit, CEO of Balenciaga at a conference in early December. Balenciaga has become a platform on which everything is possible, innovation comes first: “We can do couture, the Simpsons, Fortnite and an event in a museum,” said Charbit at the “Voices” event from Business of Fashion and announced announced that Balenciaga will hire 100 data technicians and specialists. In the future, they want to get into the Metaverse even more.

For some time now, the French luxury brand has been demonstrating what digital marketing can look like. The traditional house recently dressed the characters of the computer game “Fortnite”. During the Paris Fashion Week, which took place at the end of September / beginning of October, creative director Demna Gvasalia let guests run like models across a red catwalk and film them.

The happening was visible to everyone from the outside; inside the Théâtre du Châtelet, the assembled guests could follow on a screen who was posing on the red carpet in front of the photographers. This was followed by a short film by The Simpsons, with Marge and Homer in Balenciaga outfits. The show turned out to be a bit long overall. However, there is hardly a brand that understands as well as Balenciaga how to combine both worlds: the physical and the virtual.

An NFT is unique, forgery-proof and therefore the perfect instrument for the luxury goods industry

Balenciaga isn’t the only brand sniffing business in the virtual universe market. The company AZ Factory, which was founded by the late designer Alber Elbaz, offers limited-edition shirts that are equipped with an NFC tag, which customers can use to access a membership program when they scan their smartphone. On top of that there is a drawing by Alber Elbaz in digital form – a real NFT, non-fungible tokens.

This is to be understood as a non-exchangeable asset, a unique item that is transacted using blockchain technology. On the art market, digital NFT works have already achieved prices in the double-digit million range. An NFT is unique, forgery-proof and therefore perfect for the luxury goods industry.

However, there is something else that appeals to users: “In the Metaversum, the customer has a digital data record that only belongs to him and can also be traded,” says Achim Berg, Senior Partner at McKinsey. If the value increases, the NFT can also be silver-plated again. Luxury products are already provided with QR codes to ensure the authenticity of the product. An NFC tag on the label – NFC stands for Near Field Communication – is now the next level and is even more secure, says Berg.

So far there have only been initial attempts; the sales that are achieved with NFT products in the fashion industry are still negligible, but fashion expert Berg is certain: “The journey is now going into the metaverse. Here, digital trade could also be redistributed again.” Analysts at the Bank of Morgan Stanley estimate that the new virtual market will generate additional revenues of $ 50 billion for the fashion industry by 2030. The first platforms that sell NFT products already exist.

“You don’t get a glass of champagne with e-commerce.”

“We see that the young generation that spends time in the Metaverse has similar needs as in real life,” says Berg. And the idea of ​​dressing customers twice – in the real and the virtual world – is tempting. In the future, photo-realistic characters, so-called avatars, who wear NFT fashion and encourage people to buy twice, believes Dina Capelle, senior analyst at PAC.

However, this has also made the classic business model significantly more complicated. For brands like Balenciaga, which belongs to the French luxury goods group Kering, or Givenchy, which belongs to LVMH, it may be easy to position themselves aggressively in the metaverse. Such a digital marketing offensive is simply too expensive for smaller companies.

E-commerce already accounts for 30 percent of sales. But there are also real problems in the virtual world: “With e-commerce you don’t get a glass of champagne,” says fashion expert Berg. The pandemic in particular has shown that local customers also have to be taken care of and not just Chinese-speaking staff in the boutiques.

In order to keep the VIP customers happy, who account for 80 percent of the turnover and an even higher proportion of the profit, it is still worthwhile to rely on classic events, says Berg: “These customers want to be entertained and invited to events, where the designer is on site. Little has changed in this basic idea. ” This could also be seen during the Paris Fashion Week.

After more than a year of pandemic, the visitors were visibly delighted to meet again physically at a show, to soak up the fashion week feeling and to hurry from one showroom to the next. “If there’s one thing you don’t want, it’s to be complicated,” says designer Lutz Huelle, while showing his collection on Rue du Temple, which gives straight-cut T-shirts with puff sleeves an evening touch: “People want having fun again, a bit of glamor, but it has to be super simple, “he says. The founder of APC, Jean Touitou, currently prefers personal appointments instead of elaborate defilees. The classic collection, inspired by actress Lauren Hutton, has many basic pieces and can be worn by both men and women.

A trend that has also been seen in other companies for several seasons. Vivienne Westwood has been sending men down the catwalk presenting the women’s collection for years; At the young Parisian label Ludovic de Saint Sernin, the gender lines are almost completely blurred. Men wear tight-fitting and crop-free bustiers just as naturally as women. This is also well received by the LGBTQ fan base on Instagram.

“The new social media make it possible to go directly from inspiration to shopping.”

Instagram, Twitter and Co. are no longer ignoring any fashion company. “The new social media make it possible to go directly from inspiration to shopping,” says Berg. But stationary retail also benefits from it. More and more customers wanted exactly the look they had previously seen on the internet.

In order to use social media, however, the brands need a lot more events than two fashion shows a year, says Berg: “To do this, you have to surprise with something new every day or week.” The shows and events are therefore being exploited digitally to a much greater extent than in the past, and collections are staged in a futuristic way – suitable for Instagram, for the respective target group.

Jonny Johansson, creative director and co-founder of Acne Studios, doesn’t see the biggest fashion change from the pandemic in sweatpants and hoodies. Rather, what is new is the way in which everyone stages themselves in front of their own cameras. In their spring / summer 2022 collections, Ann Demeulemeester, Balenciaga and Yohji Yamamoto show a lot of black, while Isabel Marant, Coperni and Chanel wear casual beachwear. At Dior and Giambattista Valli, the models wear newly inspired looks in the style of the sixties.

And Balmain designer Olivier Rousteing invites the population to the Seine Musicale, a concert hall southwest of Paris, to a Balmain festival. As the grand finale, Naomi Campbell and Carla Bruni-Sarkozy walk across the stage in bling-bling robes, the hall, packed with hundreds of people, cheers – a sea of ​​smartphones lights up. Thousands are likely to have been added to the millions of followers on Instagram and Tiktok.

“Today luxury brands have a much broader class of interested parties,” analyzes Berg. This is also a consequence of the pandemic. “People have rewarded themselves for the hard times. It was part of the experience to stand in line in front of the luxury boutique. Some stand up precisely because there is a line.” In the end, luxury is always about desirability.

The shows by Saint Laurent, Rick Owens and Courrèges are among the most enchanting and impressive defilees of the week, which took place either in beautiful Parisian squares or in completely unexpected places: namely at night on the Place du Trocadéro with a view of the Eiffel Tower, under the blue sky in Art -Déco courtyard of the Palais de Tokyo or in the morning at 10 o’clock in the Bois de Vincennes, an urban forest in the east of Paris.

“We now know that the physical shows cannot be replaced, but there is also no going back to the situation as it used to be,” says Pascal Morand, Managing Director of the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode, before the show by Rick Owens begins and models in large-meshed knit ensembles walk past fog machines, while women dressed in black throw down jasmine leaves from the roof of the monument, which slowly trickle to the ground. It is quite possible that this was an allusion to the metaverse or something much bigger.