By Federico Pantano (Equity analyst)
Edited by Francesco Corbellini (Head of articles)
The metaverse
Depicting the metaverse is not at all the easy task it seems to be, first and foremost, because of its abstract connotation, and secondly because right now it’s hardly possible to forecast how it is going to evolve in the future, but a definition of it may be found in the concept of a virtual-reality space in which users can interact with a computer-generated environment and other users.
Among the industries that could be easily involved in this new reality, the metaverse can surely be very beneficial for the fashion industry, especially the high-end luxury brands. Indeed, some of them are already trying to make the most out of this new technology, such as Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Balmain.
The NFT market
Before getting into it, let’s quickly describe the NFT market. NFTs or Non-Fungible Tokens are digital identifiers that cannot be copied, substituted or subdivided. They are recorded on a blockchain and can be used to certify the authenticity or the property of an item. They usually refer to images, videos and so on.
After a NFT is minted (published), it is possible to buy, sell and trade it on the secondary market, just like any other item.
The NFT market, which had soared over the last two years, is now witnessing a remarkable drawdown. Although this market was mainly speculation-driven, the main reason for this drawdown is to be searched both on the bitcoin price and, consequently, the lower level of attention that the crypto world in general is receiving.
Let’s now focus on how luxury fashion brands are trying to join the metaverse.
Gucci
Gucci moved its first steps in the metaverse with three initiatives, the Gucci Vault, the collab with Superplastic for an NFT collection (SuperGucci) and the Gucci Garden Space, a partnership with Roblox.
source: The Sandbox
The Gucci Vault was an event hosted inside The Sandbox environment that allowed users to visit various areas such as the Vintage Lab and the Reverso Room for a limited period of time. NFT collectibles were present in the game.
source: The Sandbox
Another partnership Gucci carried out was the one with Roblox, for the Gucci Garden Space. This is an immersive experience that allows the user to take a look at the virtual collection in a virtual boutique and even allows you to book a table or to shop products from the Gucci Osteria Firenze (in Florence).
source: The Gucci virtual tour
Lastly, Gucci created an NFT collection with Superplastic, a brand known for its rare vinyl toys and collectibles. Together, they launched SuperGucci.
Louis Vuitton
The brand made its appearance in the metaverse through a mobile game launched for the 200th birth anniversary of the founder. Now you may wonder how the metaverse is involved in this, and the answer is that this is not your typical mobile game. Indeed, Louis: The Game is an adventure about Vivienne and her trip through a virtual world where you will search and collect NFTs.
In the picture below, you can see the player collecting an NFT.
Example of gameplay from Louis: The Game
Balmain
The French brand decided to join the metaverse through an NFT capsule collection that originated from a collab with the premium minting platform MINTNFT. Their collection is based on the XRP blockchain.
“The Balmain Thread is a first-of-its-kind membership program that will unlock access and provide house followers with richer experiences that were never possible before.”
CEO of MintNFT, James Sun
Before that, Balmain had created three NFTs with Barbie. They can be bought on websites like Opensea.io.
Forecasts and conclusion
Some firms involved in this new trend were presented in this article, but many more are currently exploiting the opportunity or will surely do in the future. The metaverse is helping companies to increase their popularity and their sales, with a very low increase in the costs. The metaverse prevents the firms from overstocking, which leads into end inventories. Also, through the metaverse the luxury brands can bring back vintage collections and iconic products, benefitting from them.
Lastly, although the metaverse is a relatively new environment, it might be a resounding success in the future, leading to sweepings changes in the luxury fashion industry. Therefore, we should expect more players to join and exploit this great opportunity.
Regarding the NFTs, it is difficult to state whether they are here to stay or not, but it seems that the market follows the price of the main cryptocurrencies, namely Bitcoin and Ethereum. In fact, the whole crypto world seems to be revolving around those two coins, with the former being more remarkable.
One thing that seems to drive the price of bitcoin up is the “halving”. The halving is the process through which rewards for miners are halved, making it more difficult to mine the currency and consequently increasing its value. An investment idea could be to buy now NFTs of great value and hold it until the next bitcoin halving, when the crypto world and NFTs market will receive again a lot of attenti
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