Why did Jimmy Choo also enter the NFT market?

After the extraordinary success of Dolce & Gabbana's NFT, Jimmy Choo has also created his first NFT sneaker that will be auctioned on Binance on October 20th. The NFTs will be presented through the sale of multiple mystery boxes inspired by the model of collectible cards while the NFT of a sneaker will be the protagonist of an auction. Each box contains a randomly assigned NFT with different rarity levels, one of the models in the physical collaborative collection. In total, there will be 8,888 boxes available for purchase that will include 5,333 neutral, 3,109 rare, 445 super-rare, and a single super-rare. Collectors who receive an NFT from the top two levels of rarity will be placed in a new draw to receive another exclusive NFT, created in only 100 unities. The designs of the collection, which is also physical and includes shoes and accessories for both women and men, are, as we said, the result of the collaboration between Sandra Choi, creative director of the brand, the artist Eric Haze and the Japanese designer Poggy as guest style curator. Just as in the case of Dolce & Gabbana, Jimmy Choo's entry into the digital collecting market also signals a double will on the part of brands: on the one hand, to create greater engagement through a mechanism similar to a draw/prize game; on the other hand, to culturally elevate its product through the mechanisms of the digital art market and collecting. No more shoes to wear but works to keep in a case - more or less metaphorical. 

Jimmy Choo x Eric Haze LOVE 100 Glitter Super-Super-Rare

Jimmy Choo x Eric Haze LOVE 100 Glossy Black Super-Rare

Jimmy Choo x Eric Haze LOVE 100 Glossy White Rare

Jimmy Choo x Eric Haze LOVE 100 Printed Canvas Neutral

Jimmy Choo x Binance Mystery Box

The idea is to create a collection that is collaborative and omni-channel in an absolute sense: collaborative because by combining the branding of Jimmy Choo, the artistic-creative status of Eric Haze and Poggy and also the cultistic-collecting side of the BE@RBRICK produced by Medicom Toy that is part of the collection is no longer selling a simple luxury shoe but a higher cultural product; and omni-channel because the double release of the collection, physical and digital, will maximize the impact of the release - with the added factor of the experience that, on a digital level, thanks to the format of the draw and the prizes, will be much more compelling than on that of retail, which instead runs out as soon as you leave the store or complete the checkout of online payment.

No longer the umpteenth release of a capsule but a special event for collectors, who among other things by investing their money in digital collectibles will be much more engaged than those who buy the shoe and that's it as they will have invested in the brand more than purchased by the brand. In general, NFTs, cryptocurrencies and digital fashion have given way to brands, creatives, companies and institutions of all kinds to transform their universe, limited to physical collections and the culture that surrounds them, into a metaverse in which creative work is realized and expressed on a multiplicity of platforms, including digital ones, and through new categories of products that connect the physical plane with the digital one in all its possible variations. A possible case study is Steve Madden, a footwear brand that made the history of advertising in the late 90s and early 2000s with posters representing the female stock characters of pop culture with photos of models with huge heads and disproportionate bodies and who inspired the famous Bratz dolls in 2008. The brand, today less popular than in the past but always remained commercially strong, presented its latest FW21 campaign transforming those iconic advertisements into the Maddenverse, a set of virtual content, V-commerce and interactive AR features that has as protagonists the digitized versions of influencers and singers such as Normani, Nessa Barrett, Justine Skye, Jordan Alexander and Sydney Sweeney. An example, that is, of how the heritage of a brand can be taken up, updated and rethought for a contemporary audience thanks to digital art while remaining coherent but also riding the trend of Y2K aesthetics.

In recent months, in fact, the digital art space has found a huge space for expansion thanks to various forms of buying and collecting of NFT – which thanks to their nature of "digital signature" have solved the problem of the infinite reproducibility of virtual content and created a more stable habitat for the birth of official marketplaces that legitimize the status of digital art. An epochal step forward in this sense was the inauguration by the legendary auction house Sotheby's of its own marketplace dedicated only to NFT named The Metaverse.

NFTs at auction in Sotheby's Metaverse

Serwah Attafuah - Aether: Galaxy Goddess (2021)

NFTs at auction in Sotheby's Metaverse

Rare Pepe (2016)

NFTs at auction in Sotheby's Metaverse

Lirona - Dominant #Boi and Curious #Boi (2021)

NFTs at auction in Sotheby's Metaverse

Hideki Tsukamoto - Singularity #244 (2021)

NFTs at auction in Sotheby's Metaverse

Emma Stern - Naomi-1 (2021)

NFTs at auction in Sotheby's Metaverse

CryptoKitties - 7 Gem Kitty (2017)

It is an immersive space dedicated to collectors that has already started its first sale entitled Natively Digital 1.2: The Collectors with the first 53 digital artworks and the involvement of personalities such as Steve Aoki and Paris Hilton among others. The debut of this metaverse marks the definitive formalization of the digital art movement and will open new dimensions not only for the creation and sale of multimedia artwork by brands as well as individual creatives but also for collecting, which will now be open to new segments of digitally native consumers.