Fashion and luxury brands can foray into the Web3 world in myriad ways, from children’s breakfast cereals to bespoke fine jewellery, an audience in Paris heard on Wednesday.

However, the first step is to push consumers to overcome fear of digital currencies and/or fear of digital assets being stolen.

“Once you get past this and understand the mechanics of how it works, I think the audience is huge because NFTs and digital assets can touch every category,” Alexandre Arnault, executive vice president of product and communication at Tiffany & Co., he said during a panel discussion at the Ledger Op3n Paris 2022 conference, citing art and token rooms as examples.

“Now what I think we all need to work on collectively is how to break the barrier and how to get people excited and stop being scared,” he told an audience of about 250 gathered in the Gaîté Lyrique event space. . Some 1,400 people attended the two-day Ledger event, hosted by a company that bills itself as a leader in digital asset security and utility.

Arnault stressed that the LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton family-controlled luxury group, parent of Tiffany, Dior, Fendi, Loewe and other brands, is deeply rooted in high-quality physical products.

“NFTs and digital products are a way of talking to the audience that spends half the day on their phone or Roblox or whatever, just so we can stay on their minds and stay relevant,” he said. “When we were their age, we were at the mall and now they’re all on these platforms.”

A gold necklace gleamed on Arnault’s black turtleneck as he spoke: an example of the custom-made Tiffany necklaces that 250 CryptoPunk owners will start receiving in the coming days, each pendant made by hand in US-based workshops. .to resemble your custom crypto artwork.

“We sold out pretty quickly,” Arnault said, calling it a “fun way for a 175-year-old brand to connect with a new audience.”

Arnault noted that many non-expendable token projects to date have been connected to “merchandise like hoodies,” while Tiffany opted to “do it at a very exclusive level, at the highest level of quality using gold and stones and not just fleece”. …. I think selling was proof that it was well received by the headlines.”

Ian Rogers, chief experience officer at Ledger, moderated the conversation, speaking as a colleague of Arnault’s, as Rogers had worked for five years at LVMH as chief digital officer before moving to the start-up specializing in protecting digital assets.

“Someone in our group once said that we will not sell $20 sneakers in the metaverse,” Arnault recounted, a veiled reference to his father and LVMH Chairman and CEO Bernard Arnault, who made the comment last January. in LVMH’s 2021 results. presentation in Paris.

The young Arnault stressed that the luxury giant would not jump into the metaverse “just for effect” and if one day it does so partially, “it would be in a different way” from what brands do in physical stores.

Rogers said the sneaker quote comes back to him often, but most people don’t understand that “it’s about the quality of what you do in this space, not whether or not you do it. The same person who gave the world that quote also showed me his OpenSea profile and the NFTs from his collection.”

Arnault cautioned that it’s hard to create high-quality things online “because replicating craft, replicating DNA and all these things takes a lot of energy, so I think that’s one of the reasons we haven’t quite mastered it.”

Still, Rogers noted that Web3’s world of digital assets, based on craft, belonging, aesthetics and scarcity, has a lot in common with the luxury goods and art worlds.

Yoon Ahn and Verbal, co-founders of Japanese fashion brand Ambush, talked about their recent forays into the metaverse and what they called the “verso breakfast,” a collaboration with Reese’s Puffs, which allows them to showcase their brand and content in front of a young , massive audience.

Ambush designed a limited-edition cereal box and offered an interactive online experience. Ahn characterized the project as a stress-free way to introduce people to the Web3 world.

“I don’t want to push the hierarchy that we often see in fashion. This is more of a way to make it a little smoother and easier, so people don’t feel intimidated,” he said, lamenting that fashion people, so tied to physical things, often have an “allergic reaction” to NFTs and crypto.

While some brands are still taking a wait-and-see approach to Web3 and the metaverse, Ahn advocated for a “build-and-see” approach.

“Have a vision for how you want to use it and what you want to develop as content, and then you should start doing those things,” he suggested. “This is such a new space. And there is no right or wrong way to do it. It’s literally just software and it’s just a platform. Just think about what you want to build.”

Ahn cited as an example a hoodie Ambush made out of Azuki that was embedded with a “physical backing token,” or chip. “It’s so broad how you can use that chip and what you can program on it. I just want to see if people get more creative with what they want to do with it, instead of just waiting for a case to happen.

“There are so many different ways to consume and enjoy what fashion could be, and that’s what we’re trying to do,” he added.

American artist Nina Chanel Abney said that she helps other contemporary artists get into the NFT space and has her own collection of over 5000 NFTs called Super Cool World.

“It allows me to connect with the audience better than Instagram,” he said. “I am interested in working digitally to reach a younger audience. I mean, we’re on our phones half the day, so it makes sense that artwork would eventually be viewed in a more digital capacity.”