Recently, Italian luxury fashion house Dolce & Gabbana (aka “D&G”) reported that “Collezione Genesi”, its debut NFT collection (which consists of both digital and physical works of art) had sold for over 1,885 ETH on Polygon-powered NFT marketplace UNXD, making this “the most successful digital fashion drop ever” (according to D&G).
As CryptoGlobe reported on July 15, the items from this fashion NFT collection, which was inspired by the city of Venice, and created in collaboration with UNXD, got featured in three D&G events — Alta Moda (i.e. high fashion or haute couture), Alta Sartoria (i.e. high-level formalwear), and Alta Gioielleria (i.e. high/fine jewellery) — that took place in Venice on August 28, August 29, and August 30 respectively.
Auctions of the items in the Collezione Genesi went live on the UNXD website on September 26.
The idea was that the winner of each auction would receive not just an NFT, but also the physical version of that NFT as well as access to exclusive D&G events. For example, in the case of “The Glass Suit”, the winner would receive the following set of digital, physical, and experiential goods:
According to UNXD, “this 9-piece, one-of-a-kind collection was personally designed by Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana exclusively for UNXD” and D&G says it “took an insane 16,000 hours of total time to create.”
The winning bids for these nine items ranged from 97.436 wETH (for “The Mosaic Impossible Jacket“) to 423.500 wETH (for “The Doge Crown“):
On October 1, UNXD and D&G announced that the entire Collezione Genesi NFT collection had sold for 1,885.719 ETH (worth around $5.65 million back then):
And on October 4, D&G made a point of thanking the Polygon team, “whose tremendous support and POS chain enabled a fantastic user experience.”
According to a report by The New York Times (NYT) published on October 4, the buyers “included Pranksy and Seedphrase, two leading NFT collectors; Boson Protocol, a company building a crypto-commerce protocol; and Red DAO, a decentralized autonomous organization formed in the crypto community to invest in digital fashion.”
Nick Jushchyshyn, program director for Virtual Reality and Immersive Media at Drexel University, told NYT:
“These prices are not surprising. You have world-renowned designers creating something absolutely unique, with attention to detail — it is beyond what you expect to see in a typical digital rendering — and it’s a one of one. It makes perfect sense that there would be an NFT collector in the world who would value it.“
And Dr. Merav Ozair, a blockchain technology expert and FinTech professor at Rutgers Business School, told them:
“In fact, I thought it would come sooner. We are moving toward a virtual reality world, and when we get to that state — sooner than we think, in a matter of years — luxury goods will be part of that world.“
The NYT report went on to say that “the project was born in April, when Shashi Menon, the Dubai-based publisher of Vogue Arabia, and the founder and chief executive of UNXD, approached Dolce & Gabbana with the idea.”
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