Puma: between the metaverse and NFTs at the New York Fashion Week. Discover the initiatives of the German brand in the world of Web3!
The New York Fashion Week started on Friday the 9th of September 2022, and it is almost drawing to a close. Among the fashion collections that have just taken to the catwalks of the Big Apple, one stands out from the rest. We’re talking about the German brand Puma, that has been absent from the catwalks since 2017. They were ready to return in style through such a highly anticipated event. So, why was Puma’s event on Wednesday the 14th of September 2022 so eagerly awaited? It was the first fashion show to take place in both the real world and the metaverse!
The event called Futrograde was held both on the New York catwalks and in Puma’s Metaverse called Puma Black Station. The news doesn’t end there though! In August 2022, the famous German brand launched its NFT collection on the Ethereum blockchain called Puma Nitropass. Find out how to interact with the Puma Metaverse and their NFTs!
Futrograde, the parade in the Metaverse Puma Black Station!
On the occasion of one of the most eagerly awaited fashion events of the year, Puma has developed a true Web3 ecosystem in which the industry’s leading technologies interact. One of the objectives is certainly to cross geographical boundaries and enable everyone to experience the thrill of attending a Fashion Week event.
But let’s go in order, where did the Futrograde event take place? The event took place in Puma’s metaverse called Puma Black Station, at 2am on Wednesday the 14th of September (UK time). The Black Station platform is a 3D environment designed with the Unreal 5 graphics engine. According to the brand, all of Puma’s Web3 initiatives will be made available there. As of today, users can access two portals by moving around like in a video game: one is called NFERNO and one is called FASTROID. Once you access the portal, you can move to the centre of the virtual room where two 3D models of the sneakers that Puma is about to launch are positioned, illuminated by a particular play of light.
The 3D models in question depict two Puma sneakers that NFT Nitropass owners can physically obtain. How? By burning the digital artwork currently in their possession or by destroying it forever. Puma Nitropass NFTs, built on the Ethereum blockchain, are available on the OpenSea marketplace. The collection consists of 4000 units and the minimum price at which they can be purchased is 0.23 Ether, approximately 370€.
At the back of the room of the Metaverse Puma Black Station, there is also a portal called ‘Futrograde Entry’, which was the route to the Puma show during New York Fashion Week 2022.
Puma’s Web3 and NFT journey
The fact that Puma is a brand in tune with Web3 technologies is nothing new. The German brand approached the Web3 world (and in particular the NFT space), ahead of most competitors by signing partnerships with famous digital art collections. Puma’s Web3 adventure officially started on the 21st of February 2022 with the purchase of the ENS domain puma.eth. Ethereum Name Service (ENS) is a protocol for registering domains on the Ethereum blockchain. Each ENS domain can be used as a web address, a wallet, an email or a social media account. Puma has for now chosen to use its ENS domain as the handle of its Twitter page.
Between February and June 2022, Puma launched a large series of partnerships with important NFT projects. In just a few days, it formed partnerships with four collections created on the Ethereum blockchain: CoolCats NFT, Lazy Lions, CatBlox and the Gutter Cat Gang. Each project covered different initiatives. For example, the collaboration with Lazy Lions, which took place in conjunction with NFT Week 2022 in New York, allowed Lazy Lions holders to get a Puma T-shirt with their NFT Lion printed on it. Is it a coincidence that all these NFTs depict felines?
The next step in Puma’s Web3 journey? In May 2022, the brand decided to jump in and develop its first NFT collection together with English football club Manchester City. The collection celebrates the 10th anniversary of the club’s first title in the Premier League (England’s top football league). The particular name of the collection called 93:20 refers to the time elapsed from kick-off to the decisive goal scored by Sergio Aguero during the last game of the 2011-2012 season.
The collection consists of NFTs depicting Aguero’s Puma football boot in a cartoonish, decomposed version, with a series of vignettes inside representing the city of Manchester and the Citizens team. There are only three NFTs in the collection and they differed from each other in terms of the colour of the shoe’s background and the experiences they offered to buyers. The crypto artworks created by digital artist Musketon were sold on the NFT marketplace called Makersplace at three quite different prices, precisely because they offered different benefits. The one with the blue background sold for $1,100, the one with the yellow background for about $2,000, and the one with the green background, which included four tickets to watch a match from the Etihad Stadium suite, for about $6200.
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