Part of Decential Media’s celebration and recognition of Women’s History month

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When it comes to luxury goods, there’s a certain peace of mind that comes from unzipping, unbuttoning or unclasping a $30,000 handbag and seeing a freshly minted certificate of authenticity beaming back at you.

In 2023, however, that hardcopy certificate may not possess the same reassuring power it once did. 

Eliza Lesser, founder and chief executive officer of NFSHE, an accessories brand that makes physical products tied to digital tokens, believes the certificate of authenticity’s days are numbered. 

“In the traditional fashion industry, you get a piece of paper in a designer bag that essentially says, ‘this is real,’ and is approved by the brands,” Lesser said. “Unfortunately, that’s an easy thing to replicate. Someone can very easily find a fake bag, create a fabricated authentication certificate, put it in the bag, and get a lot more money than they deserve. On the other end, someone is buying a fake bag and there’s really no tracking system. It’s kind of like the wild west.”

To solve the authentication problem, Lesser started NFSHE, which embraces the power of authentication enabled by blockchain technology. For every physical item in a given collection listed on the NFSHE website, there’s an underlying non-fungible token (NFT) verifying it, a system which Lesser believes is the future for authenticating luxury goods.

NFTs tied to underlying blockchains are transparent and show when an item was created and any further secondary transactions, she said. “So if you’re going to the secondary market or looking at any future sales, you’ll have the confidence in knowing that no matter the item, it’s actually been created by the original brand,” Lesser said. “It’s a much more reliable system.”

NFSHE is one of the first brands to be creating completely on-chain items, which is helping new web3 adopters better understand how the real world and digital world can intersect. “Each of my products comes with an NFT, and because the brand is first and foremost an on-chain brand—in order to get any of my physical goods—you have to mint the NFTs,” Lesser said. “The NFTs are almost like a digital twin, so they have an automation of whatever the physical item is. Just like in traditional e-commerce—when you go online, you see something you like, you shop for it and then you receive something in the mail—I do exactly that.”

In this way, NFSHE is more than just a digital brand, it’s a resource and model for those looking to expand their fashion business or products into the web3 realm. “People can start to understand the beauty of [blockchain] technology through shopping, which is a fun way to learn, and also something they’re already doing online,” Lesser said.

A current NFT for sale on NFSHE is for an “Elaine bag” that’s priced at about 0.12 ETH right now, or roughly $180 at current prices.

The Elaine Bag at NFSHE

Lesser started her career in traditional fashion with a focus on luxury, though something that frequently confused her was the authentication system. The more she learned about NFTs the more she recognized how the technology could benefit the authentication process, and shortly thereafter, NFSHE was born.

“A lot of other fashion brands have noticed the issue with authentication and also have a lot of interest in the web3 space, but they don’t know exactly how to get involved,” Lesser said. “NFSHE is an example of what other companies can look to in order to understand some strategies for onboarding into the web3 space and gain an understanding of how web3 can work for their fashion brand.”

Read more: Cash Labs Brings Physical Cachet To A Digital World With Metaverse Fashion Week 2023

Going forward, Lesser hopes NFSHE can help advance the intersection of real-world luxury fashion goods and digital NFT tie-ins. “A goal for NFSHE is to definitely enter the metaverse,” Lesser said. “It’s very early stages, but we’ve been having some wonderful conversations to figure out the right path in order to onboard this company there, so that’s going to be an exciting advancement when it happens down the line. For fashion in the metaverse, it’s about encouraging a new customer experience that will be very exciting for a lot of consumer goods.”

“I hope people look to NFSHE and either learn from it or shop and ask questions,” she said. “I encourage everyone to continue learning about [the web3] space because there’s so much value in this technology that I think will eventually infiltrate all types of sectors and all types of industries.”