Weekday goes phygital with The Fabricant via limited-edition drop Artifact 001

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Jun 7, 2023

With Weekday now being H&M Group’s key youth-focused brand, it’s interesting that the Swedish fashion retail giant has announced a new digital link-up with The Fabricant for the label.

They’ve partnered to launch “digital drop Artifact 001”, which sees Weekday entering the world of digital items for for the first time.

The Fabricant is a five-year-old digital-only couture house that “splices fashion with tech to redefine craftsmanship for the virtual space”.

The NFT/digital item obsession of 2022 may have gone a little quieter of late as far as grabbing headlines is concerned, but it’s not going away and companies are clearly betting on it being key, particularly in the youth and luxury sectors.

Digital initiatives continue to proliferate across the price scale. And in the same week in which Louis Vuitton announced its entry into the arena (via €39,000 ‘Treasure Trunks’ offering access to all sorts of physical-digital products and experiences), Weekday wants to be part of the trend. 

The Artifact 001 drop is made up of two digital collectibles — “an eye-catching pair of sunglasses” in two different colours. 

As with Louis Vuitton, this in’t just about selling digital items as physical versions of the glasses (“twins”) will be sold at weekday.com.

The brand has previously explored AI, avatars, AR-filters and virtual experiences and digital collectibles seems the logical next step. 

The limited-edition Artifact 001 drop consists of 300 pieces of the one-of-a-kind pair of sunglasses that come in black or white.

The design inspiration “comes from stalactites and stalagmites” with the items meant to be “an exciting clash to bring something extremely old and organic into a digital layer we’ve only just started to scratch”.

It goes live at 17:00 on 13 June on The Fabricant’s website.

Back in April, H&M Group announced that the Weekday brand will be the main thrust of “a new destination for the young, creative generation” that also saw Monki becoming part of Weekday and Cheap Monday being revived.

And this week, its MD Kim Holm said: “To become the youth destination of the future we have to be progressive but also entertaining. We want to collaborate with forward thinkers and find innovative ways to engage with our community. In a Weekday way of course.”