NFT utility continues to attract fashion and luxury brands – NFT Paris
As NFT Paris draws thousands of visitors to the French capital, artists, designers and luxury brands are proving the real-world benefits of immutable tokens and blockchain technology.
Hosted at the Grand Palais Éphémère in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, the third edition of NFT Paris showcased the impact of Web3 on various industries. Cointelegraph was on the ground to speak with individuals at the forefront of the evolving blockchain technology and mainstream adoption.
Keeping fashion in NFT
Paris is synonymous with fashion, and NFT Paris was no different. The participants displayed impeccable taste and style that matched the sector's growing appreciation for technological innovation.
Brian Trunso, vice president and head of business development at Polygon Labs, spoke with Cointelegraph while walking through the exhibit hall. The former attorney who founded a successful fashion brand now onboards fashion brands and drives Polygon's Ethereum-scaling Layer-2 ecosystem.
Prior to joining Polygon, Trunzo had been consulting large brands since 2017 and researching NFTs and blockchain use cases. Digital properties Decentraland, CryptoKitties and Axie Infinity, as well as in-game skins, served as examples of the potential of League of Legends skins in these virtual environments.
Although Trunzo fashion is known as an “avant-garde and progressive industry”, the reality is that the cogs from supply chain to design and retail are decades old, slow and tricky:
“When it comes to Web3, what really captures a lot of people's minds in fashion is that they can sell new things. You can only sell so many shirts or shoes.
Trunzo adds to the aggressive nature of the business, where growth and margins mean everything, while brands are being disrupted by the idea that they can sell digital goods or digitize and improve processes.
“Fashion breaks people's minds. They're like, ‘We haven't been able to sell anything new since we invented the hat.' It's just the way they see it.
Polygon is directly engaged with major brands in the US, Europe and Asia who are building on infrastructure. Brands like Nike have pushed the envelope by developing their own Web3 platform, Trunzo said.
“On the back-end, it's amazing what LVMH, Prada, OTB and Mercedes are doing with the supply chain and the product lifecycle. It's mind-blowing to see an Aura tag in a store, knowing that it's verified on the blockchain,” explains Trunzo.
Related: Polygon Labs and Warner Music Group Drive Music Industry's Web3 Evolution
Aura Technology gives brands access to blockchain digital product passports. While these labels may not make sense to customers right now, Trunzo believes that will change as blockchain technology becomes more ubiquitous.
Embraced by watchmakers
Ariane, an NFT protocol powered by Polygon, has established itself as a significant player in the luxury brand space. Its protocol powers product passports and NFT functions for many of the world's leading brands.
Cointelegraph spoke with Pierre-Nicolas Harstel, CEO of Ariani at NFT Paris, in particular, the watch industry has adopted blockchain-based digital passports. In the year It estimates that by the end of 2024, 30% of premium watches produced and sold worldwide will have brand credentials on the chain:
“Wachmakers like the fact that people can easily transfer ownership of the product to someone else when they interact with the watch, tracing its history after purchase.”
Hursthel said the protocol is intended to create a circular relationship between companies, products and consumers through privacy protection practices.
“It's Ariani's link. It is this eternal relationship between a brand, an object, and its various owners. They are also confident that the tokenized data infrastructure at the intersection of their products and users is the best infrastructure to build on, Harstel added.
Related: Luxury brand blockchain platform Ariane aims to scale, L2 launches on Polygon
Ariani Chairman Frédéric Montagnon highlighted the myriad benefits for brands and customers. The Arianee app allows users to track an item's maintenance history and insurance, its origin and previous ownership, and Web3 functions such as product or experience access.
Building a community
Fashion brands have also looked to take advantage of Web3's community-building aspect, with Metaverse's platform The Sandbox as a prime example.
Sandbox co-founders Sebastien Borget and Arthur Madrid highlight over 10 major fashion brands, rewarding clients such as Gucci, Lacoste, LVMH and Adidas with digital assets and NFTs.
“They see the sandbox as a platform for loyalty, engagement, community building and attention to detail from all the media they generate on social media and the attention they get from our audience,” Bourget said.
Web3 will serve as a new way for young fashion designers to explore new ways of promoting products and engaging their audience, Madrid added. Whether it's launching NFTs, art, digitized collections, or meta-contrast-based experiences or collections.
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