Casadei teams up with Another1 for Project Nayom1 for Fashion Week in Milan, claiming space in the Metaverse. Into a Brave New World, the luxury shoe designer steps into Web3 joining other luxury fashion brands with initiatives to build roots in the virtual world.
At the perfect time, The Blade Silhouette, a made to order stiletto with a digital twin is the ideal protagonist with which Casadei enters into the metaverse offering consumers an immersive experience, Casadei 3.0, located in the virtual Decentraland space. Inspired by the film Blade Runner, the Blade stiletto was originally created by the brands founder, Cesare Casadei, 10 years ago.
The anniversary of the Blade brings new synergies and collaborations as the brand enters in to the NFT space with the Blade 2049 collection of 1000 pieces and the Project Nayom1, a made to order avatar that consumers are gifted along with their purchase.
The shoes have a digital twin that when purchased, not only result in ownership of a virtual model, but also result in the purchase of an NFT from the limited Blade 2049 collection. In addition, a personalized avatar is included with which users can explore the luxury cyberpunk, neon lit metropolis creatively directed by Ricardo Cook and created by the CGI artist Alessandra Vuillermin (known online as @hardmetacore).
Hubs for metafashion, Customix and Design Accelerator, lend their expertise to the project along with Arianna Casadei and Another-1, to define a Phygital experience that will become a case study for luxury brands looking to enter the web3 space. Combining a physical and digital experience, Casadei is building their phygital experience on the Polygon blockchain. The Polygon blockchain is quickly becoming popular among artists and the creative community as the preferred blockchain for artists and creatives in the web3 space, even adopted by Broadway as the platform of choice. Not only NFTs but virtual worlds like DeCentraland, where Casadei 3.0 is located and the Cy-B3lla by Bella Hadid are also located on Polygon.
Every fashion week there are new web3 events developing as luxury enters into the metaverse. Combining the physical and digital world still has many skeptical. In an interview with Cesare Casadei, the brand's found admits he was also skeptical but believes this is the time to do it.
"I had no doubts about the virtual world. The only issue is making something virtual, real, to do something that's never been done before. It's been 10 years of the Blade [stiletto] but today it feels like it was reborn."
-Cesare Casadei, Founder
Photography by Riccardo Perdisa (@foxyperdi), from CGC Studios