Nike-owned RTFKT Studios is bringing perfume to the metaverse

Virtual fashion has risen in popularity alongside the metaverse, and now we’ll see if there’s room for fragrances, too. Luxury fragrance brand Byredo is teaming up with RTFKT Studios, the NFT makers acquired by Nike, for a series of digital perfumes called Alphameta that’ll appear on the blockchain.

The collaboration, which was inspired by video game potions, allows users to equip their RTFKT Clone X avatars with a decadent whiff of virtual perfume. A total of 26 different ingredients can be used to create a new scent — each of which is meant to convey feelings such as acuity, harmony, naivety, and virtue.

Users are encouraged to become alchemists and create a personal version of their scent based on their emotions of choice. Users can create up to 2,000 custom scent combinations using the digital emotion NFT ingredients, the results of which will eventually be used to create a real-life bottle of personalized perfume.

Each custom-made bottle will be equipped with a numbered NFT-connected near-field communication (NFC) tag that will mark the bottle as a digital collectible. Byredo perfume bottles skew minimalist now, but the metaverse-rooted bottles will be decked in exclusive Alphameta packaging.

An unlikely merge — Although this is Byredo’s first venture into the metaverse, RTFKT already made e-waves earlier this year when Nike announced it would be acquiring the startup, resulting in the first series of digital Nike sneakers.

Fashion and footwear have become hot topics in the digital sphere, even uprooting and reimagining traditional fashion design practices, but fragrances and beauty are much newer to the digital world. Clinique recently introduced makeup looks and skincare-induced glows for digital characters, and other startups have already started work on the convergence of the metaverse and real-life scents.

Byredo and RTFKT’s Alphameta collab doesn’t have an official release date yet, so you’ll have to wait a little longer to get a spritz of the “aura.” More info is coming “soon,” according to RTFKT, so your avatar will have to make do scentless for now.