Paco Rabanne Revives Unwearable Dress Archives as NFTs

Since the beginning, Paco Rabanne has always brought an innovative approach to fashion exploring dualities: from architecture to fashion design, past to future, and now making their historical unwearable garments into future-forward digital commodities.

Now under the creative direction of Julien Dossena, the legendary brand has released all twelve of the 1966 Unwearable Dresses from the Maison’s archive as NFTs as part of Decentraland Fashion Week. In collaboration with Selfridges, the NFTs can be purchased in-store and online through a screen within an immersive space showcasing Op Art works from Victor Vasarely and pieces from the SS22 collection, created by Julien Dossena with inspiration from Vasarely.

Included are some of Paco Rabanne’s most memorable creations, spanning 30 years: a sleeveless apron dress of wooden beads in a cascade of pastel hues (SS70); an haute couture gown assembled from geometric reflective laserdiscs (SS88);  a cosmic tutu in silver metal and transparent plastic (FW96), and a long dress in second-skin steel chainmail with aluminum straps (SS99) – all “completely weightless in digital version”.

The twelve creations will exist in various edition sizes: from 56, a reference to the age of the Maison. Two of the dresses are available as just two NFTs, and are offered as full Paco Rabanne experiences including a visit to Paris for the dresses to be fitted, and an invitation to the runway show. These special selects are realized according to the same techniques as the past: a gleaming cape Haute Couture cape from SS69 composed of 5,600 plexiglass diamonds and assembled with 10,000 metal rings and a black metallic “Samurai” top, miniskirt, and headpiece from AW90/91 that features more than 5,000 bead elements reproduced from the original mould.

The works can be purchased as NFTs with or without a crypto wallet: by credit card and a custodial wallet will be created using a layer-2 blockchain framework.