This is a repost of an article originally published in December 2021.
The inaugural NFT Basel conference at Miami Beach drew a mix of high-powered techies, accomplished artists, and average janes curious about the burgeoning cryptocurrency market. By now, the term NFT or “non-fungible token” has become an associated act of the virtual world, which includes music, gaming, and augmented reality. But what is an NFT, exactly? And how could it revolutionize how we pay for and value goods and services? Enter Tina Turner. Well, not the legendary singer, herself. Enter the dress she wore during her “Wildest Dreams” tour in the 1990s. Turner launched the international tour after the release of her film What’s Love Got to Do With It, which depicted her deeply painful and, eventually, transcendental experience with domestic violence.
“We went to Durban,” celebrity stylist Wayne Scot Lukas recalled of the tour during an on-stage panel discussion at the conference. “She performed in that dress,” Scot Lukas remembered. “It started raining on us that night,” he said. A model appeared on the stage wearing the haute couture metal-mesh piece designed by Gianni Versace. “It’s actually now considered priceless because it was the last thing Gianni made before he died,” Scot Lukas noted. Typically, a dress like this might be sold to a museum or a deep-pocketed collector, but in this case, Scot Lukas decided to go a different route: Auction off the dress and prepare 111 NFTs, or unique digital images, of the model in the dress.
“111 was Tina’s magic number,” Scot Lukas said.
The concept of NFTs is about monetizing the intangible. Dolce & Gabbana, for example, sold a “purely digital” Impossible Tiara for more than $300,000 back in September.
NFT users say it is a way to make haute couture accessible and lower the cost of fashion production.
“You can have on demand manufacturing and on demand shipping in a way that we don’t have yet today,” said Megan Kaspar, a panelist and manager of Red DAO.
Industry insiders say that cryptocurrency will ultimately help expand ownership of goods, granting creators greater access to royalties on their works. The extent to which NFTs might influence the fashion world is yet to be determined, though.
Reporting from ArtBasel Miami. Thanks for reading The Digest. Subscribe to The Digest here for more updates.
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