Blockchain beauty: Berlin studio unveils cyber perfume NFT artwork as a ‘fresh glimpse’ into the future

The studio and artist had designed ten exclusive NFT artworks of Look Labs’ Cyber Eau de Perfum, ​placing a reserve price of around €18,000 on the entire collection. Each NFT artwork – a unique digital blockchain asset and form of non-interchangeable cryptocurrency – came with a physically redeemable collector’s edition of the unisex perfume that featured a printed electronics label that flashed red when touched. Future NFT artwork owners would be able to redeem their own physical version of the fragrance for an additional fee.

Look Labs had also launched pre-orders for an exclusive, limited batch of the physical perfume online, priced at €240 per 100ml bottle and sold with an accompanying NFT token that held specialised content – very different, though, to the ten exclusive artworks.

Room for innovation – the fragrance market is ‘currently quite boring’​

“The physical Cyber Eau De Parfum is our first project,” ​said Jordan Katzarov, founder of Look Labs.

“The goal of the studio is to work on products that are a blend of high-quality, sustainable and disruptive technologies. At Look Labs, we want to always stay at least one year ahead of what consumer demand will be and bring unique products on the market,”​ Katzarov told CosmeticsDesign-Europe.

Asked why Look Labs had focused on fragrance, he said: “Because fragrances are another very complex art form which hasn’t been affected so much by digitalisation and the market is currently quite boring.”​

“We wanted the new generation of consumers to rediscover the perfume experience and the journey to be exciting for them. Also, the fragrance market is not innovating rapidly in my opinion, leaving unexplored opportunities for more bold scents and innovation.”​

Look Labs had worked with a small French perfume maker from Grasse to develop the unisex fragrance, packaged in a recyclable and light-weight refillable bottle. The studio then worked with Sean Caruso to digitalise the concept on the NFT artwork side of things.

The ten NFT artworks digitalised the layered scents of Cyber Eau de Parfum, including wooden notes and amber, represented in the form of spectrum data obtained from near-infrared (NIR) technology.

Sean Caruso, digital artist and founder of SCVisions, said: “I wanted a photorealistic render of the bottle with the illuminated label and the NIR data represented as a colourful spectrogram.”​

“…I was curious about the merging of the physical and digital worlds through blockchain and NFT artwork. Look Lab’s research into the authentication of physical goods using NIR technology not only has infinite real-world applications but gives artists the possibility to visualise and create unique digital art, mintable as an NFT and fused to its physical counterpart,”​ Caruso said.

Beyond beauty: NFT technology to also offer ‘practical applications’ in luxury cosmetics​

“We believe it’s a fresh glimpse of the evolution of luxury cosmetics,”​ Katzarov said.

NFT artwork, he said, was a space set to witness “massive growth and exposure”​ in coming months and years and so too was “digital fashion”.​

But for the prestige beauty market, he said incorporation of NFT art and digital tokens would also likely be linked to a practical side too, taking it beyond the fun and collectable element.

“For luxury cosmetics, I see that products will come with an NFT token used more in a way of confirming the sourcing and transparency of the ingredients in the entire supply chain. I think in the case of luxury cosmetics, we’ll witness this value distribution as well – a portion of the sale will go directly to the farmer who is sourcing the ingredients, for example,”​ he said.

“We’ll witness a lot more practical applications of the NFT technology, and the brands will be challenged to prove the scientific claims by recording the studies in NFT tokens,” ​Katzarov said.