Gucci, Louis Vuitton, And Dior Bring ‘Quiet Luxury’ To Crypto In 2024

Unlike 2022 – dubbed “A Year of Fashion NFTs” by Vogue – 2023 brought bankruptcy, scandal, and legal troubles to the crypto industry.

Consequently, appeals to ‘Web3’ and ‘the metaverse’ were absent from this February’s New York Fashion Week. And yet, in Milan, London, and Paris – luxury fashion houses Gucci, Dior, and Louis Vuitton continued to embrace crypto — but opted to drop the technical terminology.

Related articles

SEC became a defendant in the NFT classification lawsuit

30 July 2024

DraftKings Dumps NFT Business, Citing Legal Developments

30 July 2024

As we enter the Spring ‘24 season we’re left to wonder – is crypto still ‘in fashion’?

The fashion industry’s answer is two-fold: ‘crypto’ the word is out, but crypto – the technology – is very much in.

ADVERTISEMENT

Fashion’s Relationship With Crypto – Quiet Luxury To ‘Quiet Technology’

In 2021, the fashion industry welcomed non-fungible tokens (NFTs – canonical product of the blockchain industry) as a flashy luxury good – a digital complement to round out physical catalogs. NFTs added almost $50 million to the bottom lines of Gucci, Tiffany’s, and Dolce & Gabbana until declining sentiment toward crypto ushered in a new era – ‘quiet technology’.

If ‘quiet luxury’ – is about understated elegance, quality, and practicality – ‘quiet technology’ is about ‘show-don’t-tell’ projects with real-world value for fashion. Entering 2024 – the ‘loud luxury’ of NFTs may no longer be making headlines – but investments in experiential, authentication, and ‘digi-physical’ use cases are poised to be, soon.

Fashion And Crypto Today

Dior set a precedent in June – releasing sneakers with ground-breaking, in-sole authenticity enabled by blockchain – but without a single reference to Web3 or crypto. Louis Vuitton and Gucci promptly followed suit. Gucci first – sharing its runway show in its digital world, renamed ‘Ancora’, and Louis next, launching a discord server – ‘Via’ – to enable community and connection between NFT holders in September.

In each case – tech took a backseat to utility. Gucci’s Ancora show used digital space to realize its vision of a global show unmarred by rain, and Louis Vuitton’s server showcased exclusive content to build community.

As Alexandra Maslova – founder of digital-fashion upstart Seamm and speaker at this February’s Digital Couture Summit – told me in an interview: brands’ interest in crypto hasn’t disappeared, it’s changed.

“Brands had ‘fomo’ in 2021, 2022 – they jumped into crypto and didn’t get the result they expected,” Maslova shared. “Now, they’re doing things more slowly – still embracing new technology – but investing in what’s actually working vs. what’s not,”

An Evolving Relationship

Those within the blockchain industry have recognized the change – and they’re capitalizing on it.

“We want to create accessible experiences, we see crypto as a powerful way to have a lot of experiences unlocked,” Christopher Lee – founder of ‘digi-physical’ brand, IYK — told me in an original interview this fall. “It’s not about specifics or names when we’re collaborating with brands.”

Digital Twins Studios – a blockchain-fashion consulting firm known for working with traditional fashion brands like Alo – agreed: “We see this technology as something that should work under the hood.” Cofounder Adrianna Soto-Wright remarked in interview, “abstracting the underlying tech creates friendlier use cases.”

Simultaneously in fashion, CEOs and heads of renowned fashion houses like Prada, Gucci, and Dior are focused on experiences, not jargon:

“Fashion needs to evolve, it needs to move away from runway, more towards experiences as an industry.” CEO Stacey Bendet of Alice and Olivia remarked last September.

From Highly Technical to Experiential

This move towards experiences is forcing brands to get more creative when implementing crypto. Whereas 2021 and 2022 were punctuated by buzzy launches and appointments – like that of a VP of Metaverse at Gucci and a head of Web3 and Metaverse at LVMH – 2023 and 2024 Web3 investments have been subtle but immersive.

One of the most spectacular examples of such included ‘Gucci’s Ancora’ (translated ‘encore’) show at September 2023 Milan Fashion Week. Gucci’s “Dream Big” division – representative of the house’s Web3 and metaverse investments – delivered a real-world-like event across three metaverse platforms with an onboarding experience friendly to all.

The team employed allusions to real, physical spaces – drawing from Milan’s Brera District – to ease attendees into its immersive world. No technical know-how necessary.

Even at Milan’s Digital Couture summit this February 2024 – an event for technically-minded fashion insiders – there was consensus: “the next era of fashion and technology isn’t just about the tech” event founder Nikita Cikaluk emphasized in an interview during the summit.

Back to the Physical World

Even in the subdomain of ‘phygital’ fashion – a term used often to describe physical products with digital components – products are moving toward ‘quiet’, understated branding:

“I’d say we try not to include the technical language as much, we’re realizing they’re just implementation details” – said Lee when asked about their choice to describe their offerings as ‘digi-physical’ rather than ‘phygital’. “Also, we didn’t like the phonetics.”

Phonetics aside – more and more projects are moving back into the ‘physical world’ – with NFTs taking a back-seat.

In June ‘23, Louis Vuitton introduced a series of digital ‘treasure trunk’ NFTs that enabled users to purchase exclusive physical pieces. Gucci, similarly, made headlines for pairing physical ceramic structures as twins to digital artwork NFTs. Prada went so far as to use NFTs as their pass to its Milan Fashion week in September.

Authenticity

Arguably the most practical “quiet technology” trend in fashion is the utilization of blockchain as an authentication tool.

Chanel was an early adopter of blockchain-enabled authenticity – stealthily replacing its printed authenticity card with blockchain-enabled NFC microchips in fall 2021. In 2022, LVMH, Richemont and the Prada Group banded together to form a non-profit alliance – the Aura Blockchain Consortium – with the explicit goal of using blockchain to battle the growing counterfeit industry.

Looking To The Future

Those in vogue to the world of “quiet technology” express optimism about the sector:

In an original interview, Lior Cole – an IMG model and tech founder known for straddling both industries – summed it up well: “Whether it’s abstracting away technical jargon, re-imagining the interface to present the tech, or simply exploring what was previously impossible — it’s just a matter of time before something makes blockchain ‘click’ for fashion.”

What might that ‘something’ be? Judging from 2023, it might be eliminating the word ‘blockchain’ – itself.