Irenebrination: Notes on Architecture, Art, Fashion, Fashion Law & Technology

Fashion Obituary: Hanae Mori, Madame Butterfly, Flying to the World

It is a sad day for Haute Couture fans, but also for opera connoisseurs: Japanese fashion designer Hanae Mori, died on 11th August at her home in Tokyo, as confirmed by her office today.

Born Hanae Fujii in 1926 in rural Shimane prefecture, in southwest Japan, she studied literature at Tokyo Women's Christian University before specialising in dressmaking at Bunka College (at the same time when Kenzo Takada was studying there; both of them followed classes by visiting lecturer Pierre Cardin). 

Mori opened her atelier in 1951 in Tokyo's Shinjuku district, after her marriage at the end of the '40s to Ken Mori, a textile executive. She mainly focused on costumes for Japanese movies in the 1950s and 60s, creating costumes for famous Japanese actors, including Yujiro Ishihara and Mie Kitahara, Mariko Okada, Sayuri Yoshinaga, Shima Iwashita and Ruriko Asaoka.

In 1965 Hanae Mori launched her seminal "East Meets West" collection. The latter was characterised by rich and colourful Japanese patterns such as cranes, cherry blossoms and butterflies on Japanese silk, combined with western styles.

The first Japanese designer to be accepted in 1977 to show Haute Couture in Paris by the Chambre Syndicale, in 1982 she was part of "The Best Five's '83" showcase in Tokyo together with Sonia Rykiel, Norma Kamali, Kansai Yamamoto and Valentino.

In 1985 Hanae Mori collaborated with La Scala in Milan, designing costumes for "Madama Butterfly" directed by Keita Asari, with sets by Ichiro Takada.

The designer employed bright and sharp contrasts of colours for these costumes, opting for a violet kimono with white butterflies for the main character and a monumental emerald kimono for the Imperial Commissioner.

Following the Japanese tradition and inspired by Foujita's costumes for this opera, Mori also created beautiful drawings for the lining of some of the kimono jackets for Madama Butterfly's relatives. The collaboration consolidated her nickname - "Madame Butterfly" - that she earned for her signature butterfly motifs. "My butterfly comes from the image of a silver shining jet plane," the designer once explained, combining in this description elegance with her entrepreneurial vision.  

Mori often designed costumes for Noh and Kabuki theatre performances, operas and ballets. In 1986 she designed costumes for the Paris Opera Ballet's "Cinderella" directed by Rudolf Nureyev.

Mori also designed the uniforms for Japan Airlines flight attendants, banks and companies, school uniforms for junior and senior high school students, and the Japanese team for the opening ceremony of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. Many in Japan remember her for the robe décolleté decorated with petals she designed for Masako for her marriage to the then crown prince, Naruhito, in 1993.

As the years passed, her empire expanded to include perfumes, ready-to-wear for women, men and children; accessories, eyewear, home furnishings and publishing (the Mori family has held the publishing license for the Japanese edition of seminal fashion publication Women's Wear Daily). 

Favoured by working women, Mori became a symbol of female entrepreneurship: she was the first female member of the Japan Association of Corporate Executives; the Japanese government, awarded her the Medal with Purple Ribbon in 1988 in recognition of her contribution to art and, in 2002, she was awarded the Legion of Honor, France's most prestigious decoration. 

An inspiration to many, including Giorgio Armani, Mori retired after her last high fashion presentation in July 2004. In October 2014, a new Hanae Mori line was launched, designed by Yu Amatsu.

In 2020 an exhibition entitled "Hanae Mori: Madame Butterfly, Flying to the World" celebrated her at the Contemporary Art Gallery, at the Art Tower Mito in Mito, and, in 2021, her designs were included in the exhibition "Fashion in Japan 1945-2020" at Iwami Art Museum, Shimane and The National Art Center, Tokyo.

Mori is survived by two sons, a daughter, seven grandchildren, and several great-grandchildren. Her husband Ken Mori died in 1996.

Classical Antiquities as Inspiration

There have been plenty of references to pleated garments in this week's posts mentioning Issey Miyake, but, if you want to get some fresh inspirations for pleated designs, always opt for the classical period. You can actually do so by checking out the news. It was announced indeed today that the Getty Museum in Los Angeles will return to Italy three life-size terracotta statues.

The statues, probably a funerary sculptural group that may have decorated a tomb, depict a seated man with an open mouth and a plectrum in his right hand (while his left hand probably held a kithara or harp - missing) and two mythical sirens, that is creatures that lured sailors to death and that were part bird and part woman.

Dating back to between 350 and 300BC, the group is known as "Orpheus and the Sirens". Orpheus was indeed associated with the Sirens in the Argonautica, when he helped Jason and his crew safely sail past the Sirens by playing music and enchanting the monsters, yet the usual iconography depicting Orpheus shows him in elaborately embroidered oriental costume, so this may just be a deceased mortal as a musician. 

Fashion-wise there are a lot of elements to check out: sadly only traces of the original colours are left, but the man wears a mantle that covers his legs to the calves, his shoulder, and part of his left arm. He also wears thong sandals. 

For what regards the sirens' bodies, half of them is human, while the lower half features a bird's tail, legs, and talons, which grip a small, rocky base. Both the sirens wear a thigh-length chiton with an apoptygma (draped fold) that, clinging to their body, formed "windswept" pleats. A sash is wrapped high around the chest and two shoulder straps cross over the bust.

One siren has a pose of contemplation with her right arm folded beneath her breasts and her left hand propped under her tilted head; another has her left hand held in front of her chest, and her right arm stretched further out, a pose that suggests singing or dancing.

There are different ideas and inspirations here in this group of sculptures, from pleated designs and windswept motifs (that could be rendered as rigid and fixed motifs through innovative techniques and materials) to the theme of the hybrid (the side and back views of the siren sculptures may be inspiring as they show the bodies of these creatures in a clearer way).

Believed to have originated from the Taranto area in the southern Italian region of Puglia, the group has been on a list of stolen artefacts that Italy has been seeking to reclaim possession of since 2006.

The museum is also working with the Italian culture ministry to return other relics, but also an oil painting by Camillo Miola (1840-1919) known for his exotic Neo-Pompeian and Orientalist subjects.

The painting is entitled "The Oracle" (1881) and represents the Pythia, a virgin selected in ceremonies that established her as the god Apollo's choice, sitting atop the sacred tripod as the Delphic oracle.

Miola filled the canvas with seemingly archaeologically accurate details, from costumes to architecture, and furnishings, and painted in a highly detailed style to create an ancient world that appears fully real, including in the painting (on the left) the omphalos, or "navel of the Earth", the most sacred object at Delphi, considered by Greeks to be the center of the world. While there are plenty of pleated tunics in this painting, "The Oracle" may be more interesting for textile designers that may be inspired by the richly decorated tunics of the men kneeling in front of the Pythia.

The Joys of the Sculptural Staircase (or Ziggurat) Dress from Issey Miyake Back to Cinzia Ruggeri

It is always interesting to try and spot correspondences between modern collections and designs created a few decades ago. But sometimes it is also possible to spot correspondences between creations made a few decades ago by iconic designers.

For example, the late Japanese designer Issey Miyake launched for the A/W 1994-95 season his "Staircase Pleats" collection. The latter included a series of signature pleated polyester works, characterized by a staircase or ziggurat-like form.

In one case four panels formed the body of the garment, the pleated structures creating staircase effects on the sides, on the front and back of the dress. Miyake also came up with pants characterised by a staircase silhouette.

Critics at the time stated that the precision-cut staircases in this collection pointed at early modernist design and art movements, among them Cubism, the Bauhaus, and Russian Constructivism. Yet there was also another affinity and not with a specific art movement, but with an Italian fashion designer.  

In the early '80s Italian Cinzia Ruggeri was the queen of the wearable staircase/ziggurat form: she created indeed quite a few designs inspired by it, among the others a yellow dress with multiple staircase cut panels protruding from it, a green one that was more similar to a ziggurat pyramid, and her most famous one, the "Homage to Lévi-Strauss" dress, with its staircase/stepped ziggurat form along the collar and skirt.

Conceived by Ruggeri as a personal symbol, but also as a reference to a common motif in post-modern architecture and design in the '80s (think about Alessandro Mendini's "Monumentino da casa" or "Monument for Home), the designer also applied it to her shoes.  

Ruggeri's designs pre-date Miyake's, so it is only natural to wonder, did the Japanese designer actually see Ruggeri's dresses before coming up with his collection? We will never know for sure, but, as the designers both passed away, maybe they can now discuss the joys of the staircase dress in another world and, in case, settle their dispute about copyright matters in the celestial sphere.

Dichotomies in Issey Miyake's "Bodyworks"

In yesterday's post, an obituary for Issey Miyake, we mentioned his exhibition "Bodyworks" that toured internationally from 1983 to 1985. For this event Miyake designed black mannequins characterized by flexible or sculptural poses that emphasized the shape of the female body.

Through the exhibition the designer wanted to explain how, in his opinion, all clothes started from a study of fabrics, and with "fabrics" he meant textiles, but also alternative materials such as paper, metal and plastic. The exhibition included garments that guaranteed the body freedom of movement, but also sculptural designs that shaped the body.

In one section mannequins were suspended in the air as if they were floating in the exhibition space, some of them clad in the waterfall body, an acrylic fixed draped bodice with a skirt of the same fabric falling naturally into soft folds.

In another a group of mannequins in sculpted swimsuits in black, red and black or blue and black, seemed to emerge from a wave-washed beach. In this way, by juxtaposing soft and hard materials, Miyake created a dichotomy of materials and forms.  

Fashion Obituary: Issey Miyake, Between Vionnet and Christo

"(Issey Miyake's) cape with an attached hood enshrouds the wearer, as protective and imposing as a nomad's tent. He has recapitulated the traditional Japanese students' uniform, adapted the traditional work apron of the Japanese housewife and exalted the quilted cotton tunic of the Japanese martial artists. A series of dresses is inspired by the colourful, twisted fabric which is used as a ceremonial rope to lead honored horses during a festival in his homeland. A flapping jumpsuit mimics the pose of a flying squirrel. A multi-coloured layered dress whirls open to reveal a shape familiar to millions of Japanese childre, the spinning top. His spinnaker dresses which are completed by a separate square attached to the shoulder, move like billowing sails at sea."

Susan Sidlauskas, Curator, "Intimate Architecture: Contemporary Clothing Design", Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1982

Issey Miyake, the Japanese fashion designer known for his pleated designs, died on 5th August of liver cancer in a Tokyo hospital, as announced today by the Miyake Design Studio in an official release. He was 84.

Born in Hiroshima in 1938, Miyake was seven years old when the atomic bomb was dropped on the city. Within three years his mother had died of radiation exposure. Miyake is said to have wanted to become either a dancer or an athlete, but he eventually found his design vocation inspired by his sister's fashion magazines.

He went on to study graphic design at Tama Art University in Tokyo and, in the '60s, he moved to Paris. Here he apprenticed to Guy Laroche, became an assistant to Hubert de Givenchy and, when he moved to New York, he also worked for Geoffrey Beene.

His experiences in the Big Apple prompted Miyake to ponder more about fabrics and how he could reinvent traditional ones. In an interview published on Domus Moda in May 1981 he stated: "In New York I was looking at what people were wearing, like jeans and I thought 'Why couldn't I do something with the traditional Japanese things?' First I started with quilted cotton, sashiko, worn for judo, kendo, sportswear and farmer clothes but I could not use it as it was – handwoven and narrow – it was too expensive. So I had it done by machine and I did the same with any other materials."

In 1970 he returned to Tokyo where he founded the Miyake Design Studio that focused on practical and functional designs, inspired by his passions for fabrics and movement. In that Domus Moda interview, Miyake stated indeed: "The idea for my clothes always comes from a piece of fabric that I design. There's a special relationship in my clothes between cloth and body, there’' a coexistence of cloth and body which become one through movement."

In the early '80s in Italy there were designers who had started experimenting with light designs that could be folded and easily packed. But Miyake took the discourse further when he started experimenting with pleated fabrics that called to mind Mariano Fortuny's designs and that held their shapes while guaranteeing freedom of movement to the wearer.

The fabric's ability to hold its pleats made it perfect for dancers as proved by Issey Miyake's costumes for "The Loss of Small Detail" (1991) for choreographer William Forsythe. At the time Miyake was working on pleated clothes, but his experiments with colours hadn't been successful.

For Forsythe's performance he designed white, black and gray costumes and used them as trials to monitor the levels of durability. The dancers energetically moved in his costumes, allowing him to study the weak and strong points of his designs and to eventually launch his line "Pleats Please" three years later.

Miyake's "Pleats, Please" line was followed by the men and women collections, accessory lines and fragrances. One of the first Japanese designers to show in Paris, he became known for a style suspended between Japanese crafts and high-tech experiments.

One of his most experimental lines remains Miyake and Dai Fujiwara's innovative "A-POC" (A Piece of Cloth) concept knitwear, created without using needle and thread construction but feeding the yarn into a computerised loom programmed with structural patterns that the consumer could cut along perforated lines, obtaining form-fitting garments. Designs from this line are often featured in museum collections or in exhibitions such as "Future Beauty" at London’s Barbican.

Miyake retired from the frontlines of fashion in the late '90s to devote himself to research, though he continued to oversee the creative direction of all his lines. His collections, showcased in Paris, often featured elements of performance and experimental artists as well.

In more recent years the brand developed origami-inspired designs like the ingenious "132 5." collection, made in a polyester fibre generated by Teijin Limited from chemical recycling by pulverizing, melting and spinning threads out of polyethylene terephthalate,  but also interior design pieces in collaboration with other partners such as Italian lighting company Artemide.  

Miyake was among the few designers featured in a fashion and architecture exhibition that made history - "Intimate Architecture" exhibition (1982, Massachusetts Institute of Technology).

The exhibition was among the very first ones analysing the links between fashion and architecture and remained throughout the years an important landmark for many museum curators and researchers interested in the fashion and architecture connection.

The catalogue introduction stated about the designer: "Issey Miyake's attitude towards his work bridges two seemingly disparate approaches towards the manipulation of fabric: the classical restraint of Vionnet’s designs and the exuberance of Christo's 'Running Fence', an environmental sculpture composed of undulating sheets which reacted to the forces of nature."

That exhibition featured some of his early designs, that became some of his most iconic as well, including Issey Miyake's red plastic bustier molded on a woman's torso that ended with a short peplum of fabric-like folds at the hips.

This piece from Miyake's Autumn/Winter 1980-81 collection also became a focal point of his "Bodyworks" exhibition that toured internationally from 1983 to 1985.  

According to Japanese media a private funeral has already taken place and there will be no public memorial service, per the designer's wishes.

A statement from the house hopes his creations, but also his passion for research, will inspire future generations: "Never one to embrace trends, Miyake's dynamic spirit was driven by a relentless curiosity and desire to convey joy through the medium of design. Always a pioneer, Miyake both embraced traditional handcrafts but also looked to the next solution: the newest technology driven by research and development. He never once stepped back from his love, the process of making things. He continued to work with his teams, creating new designs and supervising all collections under the various Issey Miyake labels. His spirit of joy, empowerment and beauty will be carried on by the next generations."

Art That Makes You Remember, Think & Ponder: From Marcinelle to Christian Boltanski

My mum and my aunt, both in their 80s, have a vivid memory of seeing something shocking in 1956 passing in the street in front of their house - trucks loaded with coffins, bringing back the bodies of local miners, migrants from Abruzzo, who had died in Marcinelle, Belgium.

On the morning of 8th August 1956, an underground electrical fire trapped a large number of mineworkers at the Bois du Cazier coal mine in Marcinelle. Rescue operations continued until 23rd August, but, in the end, of 274 people working at the mine that morning, 262 of them died of smoke inhalation and carbon monoxide poisoning below ground. Among them there were Belgian workers, but most of the victims were migrants - 136 were Italians (60 from the Abruzzo region and in particular 23 from Manoppello, later dubbed "Città Martire" - "Martyr Town"). The Italian workers were sent to Belgium after the 1946 "men for coal" agreement: Italy agreed to send its surplus manpower to the mines of southern Belgium, in return for 2-3 million tonnes of coal a year at preferential rates.

Over 70,000 Italian men went to work in Belgium between 1946 and 1949; in the 1950s there were 20 mining companies operating in the Charleroi basin, employing 25,000 men, half of them Italians.

Belgian mines had a bad reputation - they offered the lowest pay and worst conditions in Europe, besides migrants were also despised and mistreated. The Marcinelle disaster prompted Italy to demand better working conditions for the Italian guest workers in Belgium and, as the decades passed this tragedy turned into a symbol of forced migration caused by hunger and poverty (in memory of the miners who died in Marcinelle, since 2001 Italy proclaimed 8^th of August, National Day of the Sacrifice of Italian Workers in the World). 

Art helps us turning even the worst tragedy into a moment to ponder in the quietness of a museum or an exhibition space. The late French artist Christian Boltanski (1944-2021), for example, paid homage to the miners who worked and lost their lives in Belgium between the '20s and the '50s with two of his most overwhelming installations.

"Les registres du Grand Hornu" (The registers of the Grand-Hornu, 1977) consisted in a stacked pile of metal biscuit boxes like those ones children used to keep their treasures in, with a photo or the name of a missing miner and dates of engagement, as if they contained their ashes or personal memories.

"La Terril Grand-Hornu" (The Slag Help of Grand-Hornu) - a pile of black jackets from the miners of the Grand Hornu region (today a World Heritage site) in Belgium - was instead created in 2015 as an installation for the museum of contemporary arts of Grand-Hornu.

The boxes and the clothes perfectly manage to conjure up to our eyes and minds the physicality of the Marcinelle tragedy as well. These installations prove that art amplifies memory and can help us remembering, paying homage and pondering about the cruel conditions of workers in the first decades of the 20th century and in our times as well.

From an Antique Piece to a Craft Project

The last few posts looked at technology and the digital realm, so let's get crafty today with an idea from Tatami Antiques, an independent online marketplace for Japanese antiquities that often offers intriguing textile pieces and ideas for fashion designers.

Among the latest offers on the site there is a purse made of a cotton and acetate sock with a geometrical motif. Reminiscent of conceptual fashion pieces such as Martin Margiela's glove bags, the sock purse is available from dealer Onen or, if you have time to spare and a forgotten sock at the bottom of a drawer that you particularly liked and you didn't have the heart to throw out, you can try and redo the sock purse by yourself as a Sunday craft project. Enjoy! 

Art Concepts That May Inspire Fashion Brands To Create Long-Lasting Experiences

In the last few posts, we looked at fashion projects bridging the gap between the digital and the physical realms and in particular at fashion houses offering drops of NFTs and physical items. Yet there are contemporary artists who have been working along the same lines for a while now. Dutch artist, producer and DJ Don Diablo is among them. 

In 2021, his work "INFINITΞ FUTURΞ" (2021) was sold for $927,500 at Sotheby's "Natively Digital: A Curated NFT Sale". The artwork combined digital art with a physical component: the digital part of the NFT, a visualization of an infinite loop showing an energy trapped in a constantly evolving maze, symbolizing the circle of life, was stored on a support similar to 80s video game cartridges.

The NFT became visible when the cartridge was inserted into a custom-made, transparent hologram cabinet. But the innovative aspect was that, after receiving the permission of the collector, Don Diablo would wirelessly send new art to the collector directly into the art piece at any time and from anywhere.

A new relationship formed therefore between collector and artist, so in this case the NFT was just the beginning of something - a new experience, and a new relationship. As brands and fashion houses try to extend the experience of buying something for  their consumers and offering digital and physical products, maybe they should take a hint from innovative art projects like this one.

Crypto Trends in the Luxury Industry: Gucci + ApeCoin

In May this year, Gucci started accepting 12 cryptocurrencies - Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ethereum (ETH), Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), Litecoin (LTC), "meme" cryptocurrency coins Shiba Inu (SHIB) and Dogecoin (DOGE), and five U.S. dollar stablecoins (GUSD, USDC, USDP, DAI and BUSD) - in selected U.S. boutiques for in-store purchases.

At the beginning of August, the high-end Italian fashion house announced it was the first major brand to accept also payments in the Bored Ape Yacht Club-affiliated ApeCoin (APE) in its stores in the US.

Payment infrastructure will be provided by BitPay, a firm that has helped big names such as AMC Theaters accept crypto payments and also meme coins - dogecoin and shiba inu. This week, after BitPay announced it was supporting two more cryptos, ApeCoin and Euro Coin, Gucci announced it would have started accepting APE.

Launched in March, ApeCoin is a token of the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT collection, loved by many NFTs fans, including many celebrities. At the time of writing this post APE is priced $6.95 due in part to positive developments in the affiliated Otherside metaverse project (yet APE is still down compared to its all-time high of $26.70 at the end of April 2022).

The total supply of ApeCoin is permanently fixed at 1 billion tokens. No minting capability is exposed through the contract interface, thus the total supply will never increase. Similarly, the contract interface does not expose any token burning capability, so the total supply will never decrease. Supported by an engaged decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) and governance community, the Ethereum-based token has currently got a market cap of roughly $2.06 billion and it is the 33rd largest asset in crypto.

This is not the first time Gucci launches a project with Bored Ape Yacht Club holders in mind: Gucci has been into NFTs since 2021 when it launched its first NFT, a 4-minute film inspired by its "Aria" collection, sold at an online auction hosted by Christie's. This year, the fashion house launched "SUPERGUCCI", a three-part NFT collaboration with Superplastic, creator of animated celebrities and digital vinyl toys, and, more recently, the "Gucci Grail" NFT collection, developed with digital artist Wagmi-san and targeting owners of existing blue-chip NFT projects such as Bored Apes, Pudgy Penguins and World of Women. 

To engage with the digital community, the fashion house also launched the Gucci Vault Discord server, an online community where you can read news, information on future drops and rare vintage selections, and purchased virtual land in blockchain-based real estate platform The Sandbox to develop a digital property.

The main consequence of this announcement is a boost in exposure for the ApeCoin project, while crypto aficionados seem to have welcomed the opportunity to pay with cryptocurrencies at Gucci stores (Twitter personality NBATopShotEast claimed to be the first person to pay for Gucci items in ETH at the brand's Wooster Street location in New York City in July).

Cryptos are still subject to major crashes, besides, as you may remember from a previous posts, there's pros and cons in jumping on the crypto bandwagon for a fashion label (prices must be constantly monitored and updated as their value rapidly changes and refunds may be tricky for the same issue; besides, when it comes to cryptos there are also environmental and money-laundering concerns and tax implications...). Yet many people remain fascinated by digital currencies and Gucci seems keen on experimenting with them, maybe envisaging a future ruled by cryptos (as we foresaw in an early post in 2017...). So which fashion house or brand will be aping Gucci next and accept ApeCoin?

NFTs as Vehicles for Consumer Engagement

Combining a digital NFT offer with a physical item has become common in the fashion industry for a while now. Usually such offers come in limited editions, something that ties in with important principles for luxury collectors – scarcity, desirability and trends.

At the moment quite a few brands are studying new ways to engage consumers, though, and create experiences that combine a drop with a digital offer or a digital offer with an exclusive physical item. The aim for brands and fashion houses is one – extending the experience of buying something for their consumers and offering them more value and the opportunity to create more impact with pieces they can post on social media and wear in the real world.

In June, Prada gave out NFTs, issued on the Ethereum blockchain (and using the technology of Aura Blockchain Consortium, the collaborative platform originally launched by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton) to customers purchasing their latest item - a unisex shirt in black or white designed in collaboration with artist and musician Cassius Hirst, son of artist Damien Hirst.

The shirt was part of the house’s Timecapsule limited-edition drop of ready-to-wear products (available only on the brand’s online store just for 24 hours). Also customers who bought the previous drops received NFTs. Besides, the fashion house also launched around the same time "Prada Crypted", its community server on the Discord social platform, open to everyone.

This month instead Prada announced a new offer: 50 shirts integrating deadstock textiles with archival prints including the Frankenstein one (A/W 2019). Dropping tomorrow, the shirts will entitle customers to exclusive complimentary NFTs and to a unique experience - the chance to be shortlisted to be flown to Milan and see the S/S 23 show (scheduled on 22nd September).

Tiffany & Co. has also been researching innovative ways to combine digital and physical products. Rather than looking for the next Elsa Peretti, Tiffany launched the NFTiff Service that allows Cryptopunk owners to turn their NFTs into unique bejeweled pendants. The service was inspired by a bespoke pendant that Tiffany executive vice president for product and communication and Cryptopunk holder Alexandre Arnault had it made to look like his Cryptopunk #3167.

From Friday Cryptopunk holders can buy access the NFTiff website and purchase a pass (there are only 250 available and one person is allowed a maximum of three passes) that will be stored in blockchain technology. The passes - only available for purchase with Ethereum cryptocurrency - are priced at 30 Ethereum, which is trading at around $48,000 at the time of writing this post. 

The pass will allow holders to mint a Tiffany & Co. pendant inspired by the owners' Cryptopunk and receive it as an NFT and order a real pendant designed at Tiffany's innovation center in New York City and produced at its workshop in Rhode Island.

In 18-karat rose or yellow gold, the pendants will feature a minimum combined total of 30 gemstones and diamonds (the Cryptopunk number will be engraved on the back of the pendant) and they will come with a chain with rectangular links inspired by the shape of square pixels. The digital NFT rendering of the pendants will be sent in December, while the physical jewelry delivery is targeted for early 2023.

These projects hope to target new audiences: Prada's remains in the realm of luxury fashion, but it is still more affordable than Tiffany's, yet both offers target young, affluent and crypto savvy people and aim at creating a new consumer base.

And while just three years ago digital wardrobes may have been the ultimate democratization of fashion, these NFT focused projects are pushing this new technology towards the creation of an elitist group, a VIP club of NFTs collectors who are also fans of hyper luxury designs.

As fashion houses and brands realise that offering an NFT with a physical design and vice versa is not enough, the rush towards the exclusive experience for a very limited number or people, from a Willy Wonka-like golden ticket to a fashion show to the possibility of having a bespoke piece of jewellery made for you, becomes imperative. We'll see where it leads us.