Dolce & Gabbana stunned the world in October 2021 when the renowned design house stepped into the world of fashion NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, and sold its first collection for nearly $6 million. Dolce & Gabbana auctioned the collection, titled Collezione Genesi, on UNXD, a digital luxury market.
Non-fungible tokens are digital assets, like images, gifs, and videos,, built on a cryptocurrency blockchain and sold through an NFT marketplace, like UNXD. Non-fungible means the digital asset is original and cannot be copied, substituted, or subdivided.
Fashion NFTs prove ownership of an original digital garment. In many ways, it’s like owning a custom-made ensemble with the NFT proving its authenticity.
The World of Fashion NFTs
Gaming was Dolce & Gabbana’s first foray into digital fashion. The luxury design house partnered with SKNUPS, a digital collectibles platform, to create branded skins or character avatars. The Dolce & Gabbana creations were then dropped as limited-edition, character-ready collectibles.
As NFTs gained momentum and fetched top dollar from collectors, Dolce & Gabbana decided to conquer that space, as well, with the launch of its Collezione Genesi NFT collection. One item, The Doge Crown, featuring seven blue sapphires and 142 diamonds, sold for $1.3 million. Another, the Glass Suit, designed by Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, sold for more than $1 million.
If that seems like too much, rest assured all buyers received more than the NFT. A real-world version of each Dolce & Gabbana creation accompanied each NFT in the nine-piece collection. The real-world Glass Suit, tailored to the buyer’s specifications, for example, is now the most valuable suit sold by Dolce & Gabbana. Buyers also received exclusive access to Dolce & Gabbana’s couture events and a private tour of the fashion house’s design studio.
The Future of Fashion NFTs
The metaverse, often referring to any number of virtual reality platforms like Decentraland and Fortnite, is poised to be an $800 marketplace by 2024, according to Bloomberg.com. As the metaverse expands, fashion houses will continue to invest time and energy in creating digital fashion for players and meta-citizens.
Some futurists even believe digital fashion could help the environment by slowing the purchase of cheap and trendy fast fashion. The desire to own fashionable and exclusive avatar attire will become more common and could replace some real-world fashion purchases, those experts speculate. If so, that would reduce fast fashion demand, lowering clothing production and the carbon emissions that come with it.
The future could arrive sooner than expected. Virtual malls dedicated to fashion NFTs already invite shoppers to check out the latest digital styles. Decentraland even hosted its first virtual fashion week in March 2022. Anyone in the world could attend the event virtually. Fashion on display could be purchased and displayed immediately, as well.
As for Dolce & Gabbana, the design house is expanding its NFT strategy by launching the DGFamily NFT Community. Through the community, Dolce & Gabbana will regularly release exclusive NFT creations. Collectors are invited to join Dolce & Gabbana’s digital fashion journey.
