Virtual Couture: The Fabricant, Tribute Brand, Exclusible, and more | MVFW 2022 Panel Series

MVFW 2022 Panel Series
Written By David Cash

Kerry Murphy of The Fabricant, Gala Marija Vrbanić of Tribute Brand, Olivier Moingeon of Exclusible, Subham Jain of XR Couture, Leila Ismailli of Artisant, and James Gaubert of Republiqe join host David Cash to talk about virtual couture and digitizing high fashion. Recorded at Metaverse Fashion Week in Decentraland, March 2022, the panel looks at digital craftsmanship, production pipelines, polygon limits, and how luxury houses are starting to build digital products.

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Chapters

  1. 00:00 Welcome: virtual couture and digitizing high fashion
  2. 02:02 Introductions: The Fabricant, XR Couture, and Exclusible
  3. 10:25 Introductions: Tribute Brand, Artisant, and Republiqe
  4. 17:28 What digital craftsmanship means for couture
  5. 19:01 Kerry Murphy on pipelines, automation, and democratization
  6. 24:12 Subham Jain on turning high poly designs into low poly wearables
  7. 27:10 Olivier Moingeon on digital designers as modern artisans
  8. 32:55 Gala Marija Vrbanić on brand collaborations and simple ideas
  9. 35:51 Leila Ismailli on luxury brands and digital native creators
  10. 41:52 James Gaubert on speed to market and the end of overstock
  11. 47:50 Closing thoughts and Fashion Week activations

Speakers

  • Kerry Murphy, co-founder and CEO, The Fabricant
  • Gala Marija Vrbanić, founder and CEO, Tribute Brand
  • Olivier Moingeon, co-founder and CCO, Exclusible
  • Subham Jain, founder, XR Couture
  • Leila Ismailli, Artisant
  • James Gaubert, founder, Republiqe
  • David Cash, curator of MVFW (host)
  • From the conversation
  • "digital designers are the artisans of the 21st century." (Olivier Moingeon)
  • "we believe that there's more than enough physical fashion brands in the world." (Kerry Murphy)

Key topics

  • Digital craftsmanship and the hours behind a virtual garment
  • Visual effects style pipelines built on CLO3D, Houdini, and Unreal Engine
  • Optimizing one design for Decentraland, The Sandbox, AR, and photography
  • How luxury houses enter Web3 through marketplaces and partners
  • Designing for polygon limits without losing the idea
  • Digital fashion as a voice for designers anywhere in the world
  • Speed to market, no overstock, and secondary sales
  • Co-creation and community-run fashion shows

How to cite

APA: Cash, D. (2022). Virtual Couture: The Fabricant, Tribute Brand, Exclusible, and more | MVFW 2022 Panel Series [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/R-CMSGZcUWY

Chicago: Cash, David. "Virtual Couture: The Fabricant, Tribute Brand, Exclusible, and more | MVFW 2022 Panel Series." YouTube video, 2022. https://youtu.be/R-CMSGZcUWY.

About the series

The MVFW 2022 Panel Series is a set of ten conversations recorded during the first Metaverse Fashion Week in Decentraland in March 2022. The series was hosted and curated by David Cash and produced by Cash Labs, bringing designers, editors, artists, and technologists together to talk about where fashion goes when it moves into virtual worlds. Several of the artists and brands in the series also showed work in the Cash Labs Gallery in Decentraland during the week.

Transcript

Machine-transcribed and reviewed. Timestamps link to the moment in the video.

[0:10] Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the main stage of Decentraland's Metaverse Fashion Week. We're back again for another very exciting panel that I have been looking forward to. So today, of course, the topic is virtual couture, digitizing high fashion. We're going to be joined by a number of experts today from various brands who have tackled the issue of couture or high fashion in the metaverse before and see each of their various points of view on the matter. So just want to quickly introduce everybody. Obviously, this is our last panel today. We have one more day of panels tomorrow, but we appreciate you being here once again. And yeah, just want to quickly introduce our panelists as always and then give each of them a chance to tell you a little bit more about themselves and all of the incredible work that they're doing. So, of course, today we have Kerry Murphy, CEO and co-founder of The Fabricant.

[0:58] We have Gala from Tribute Brand, founder of Tribute Brand. We have Olivier from Exclusible, founder of Exclusible. We have Subham, founder of XR Couture and James Gobert, creative director at Republique. And we're really excited to have this chat today. Oh, and of course, we have Leila from Artisans, of course, of course, and really excited to share the stage with all these incredible folks today and hear how each of these brands that these incredible founders have created tackle the issue of high fashion in this space. And we're really excited to tackle issues of digital craftsmanship and what that means in more detail in today's conversation. So to kick off today's chat, I would love to pass the mic around the stage and just let each of our panelists introduce themselves in a little bit more detail and tell you a little bit more about the companies that they run and what they're all activating this week during Fashion Week and have been activating this week during Fashion Week.

[1:51] And I'm just going to present people as I see them before me right now. So if that's OK with everybody. So up first in my line of sight is Kerry Murphy. Kerry, so nice to share a stage with you. How are you doing today? And yeah, tell us a little bit more about yourself and the Fabricant. Yeah, thank you so much, David. Really appreciate you having me here. So I'm Kerry. I'm one of the founders of the fabricants, originally from Finland, living in Amsterdam for the past 20 years and working on a digital fashion house or as we call it, the centralized digital fashion house concept. Basically, globally, we have a global team of around 50 people these days, fashion designers, blockchain developers, gaming developers and visual effects designers. And we position our company dead middles of fashion industry, gaming industry and the blockchain industry.

[2:44] We really are passionate about fashion and especially digital only fashion. I see a lot of a lot of companies working on both the digital and the physical side of things, which absolutely makes sense. But we're really focusing on the digital only aspect of fashion simply because we believe that there's more than enough physical fashion brands in the world. And secondly, the supply chain of the physical fashion industry is just a complete beast to handle. And it's very, very, very fractured. And there's just a lot of challenges. So we decide to focus on the digital only challenge, which is just basically doing a visual effects pipeline, similar how movie companies do that. And we're just establishing a technical pipeline to create digital only fashion using software like Clo3D, Houdini and Unreal Engine. Those are our main tools.

[3:40] And we're always focused on creating the highest quality of digital only fashion because we're true believers that for digital only fashion to really resonate with the mainstream audience, there needs to be two different things. One is the high quality visual aspect to really create that emotional connection to the viewer themselves, to really connect that storytelling of the clothing to the viewers. And secondly, really just focusing on the utility side of things as well. So that there is a use case, really trying to take it away from only just the collectible side of things, but also give use cases. And the use cases that we're talking about these days are augmented reality filters using something like Instagram or Snapchat, implementation into NFT games. And I really want to focus on NFT games because the traditional gaming industry is also very hard to penetrate into.

[4:37] And then another aspect is really for social media, just dressing photographs, dressing videos. I think that's a big trend that we see companies like DressX doing and other players. And yeah, those are basically the utility cases right now. But I think that we really need to push it further from those three utility cases because many still see them as a gimmick. And I think every single person on this panel is working very, very hard to make digital fashion something of value for the mainstream audiences. So I'm super excited to be here with such a fantastic panel and I will pass it on to the next person. Awesome. Thanks so much, Gary. Appreciate you being here and looking forward to digging into everything that you guys do in your ethos of the fabric and a little bit further. Up next, I would love to pass the mic over to Subham.

[5:32] Subham is from XR Couture, another company really innovating in the space and creating some beautiful garbons. Subham, I'd love to hear some of your thoughts on this idea of digitizing high fashion. But first, if you just introduce yourself and what XR Couture does. Sure. So hi, everyone. And thanks, David, for having me here. It's really incredible to be here with, you know, along with all the top innovators from the digital fashion world. So XR Couture is a digital fashion pocket place where we create clothes that don't exist. These are digital only fashion, which you cannot touch, but you can definitely wear them. You can wear them in AR, you can wear them in VR inside of a metaverse, a game and also on a photograph. So when we started back in September 20, we were a Web2 platform.

[6:23] And of course, we started with the aim of becoming into a Web3 platform. But of course, it was already back then. And today we just just a week ago, we just launched our first inaugural NFT fashion collection. And it's been going really well. The community has been super supportive. And so, yeah, we've just been testing the waters and it's been going great. And talking about high fashion coming into the metaverse space, I think this is just the beginning. We are at where we see the top brands coming inside and exploring again. But it's been it's been a wonderful. I mean, it's been wonderful. And I think this is going to continue for a really long time to come. But are we going to see all the brands, not just the high fashion, but even probably the fast fashion brands coming in. And probably they're not going to be any more fast fashion brands.

[7:17] Awesome, awesome. Yeah, I'm really excited to see how we're going to progress as we establish this next level of design, the unreal engine that Kerry is talking about. So, yeah, I'm sure we're going to dig into that a little bit deeper in this conversation. I'm really happy to have you here, Supam. We'd love to pass the mic now over to Olivier from Exclusible. Love the work you're doing. We'd love to hear a little bit more about your background and all of the work you're doing with Exclusible. A ton of work. I've seen a ton of announcements over the past month. So congratulations for that. But yeah, we'd love to hear more from you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, we keep busy now. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you, David. And yes, I'm Olivier. I live in New York. I've been in New York for 18 years now, and I'm one of the co-founders of Exclusible. And so my background is really luxury. I worked at Cartier and then Goya, and then also Bastille, which is a French beauty brand.

[8:07] And so with the rest of the team at Exclusible, when we started building the company, our mission was really to help luxury brands and also exceptional artists tap into Web3 through NFTs at first. And so we established Exclusible as a NFT marketplace for luxury, for brands, for that elevated type of NFT. But we also quickly added the Metaverse layer. And our philosophy is that we are doers. And so we bought a lot of land in Sandbox. We have like three large six by six. Over the weekend, we bought some land in NFT world as well. We're building in spatial. And so our philosophy is to basically try and go and build in some, you know, every Metaverse that we can to create beautiful experiences and then inspire the brands that we work with to tap into that new world, new territory.

[9:07] So the way we work is that we guide and we brainstorm and we strategize with the brands and we bring on partners. And that's why I know James very well. We bring on like really experts, especially on the fashion side, because it's such a specific vertical. And so we create those teams to really help the brands develop NFT collections that will be compelling and that are just the beginning. For us, it's never the end. It's just the beginning. It's all about building that Web3 community and enriching it over time. And brands are interested. They are curious, but they don't know where to start, how to do it. And the one thing that we do is to try to de-risk as much as possible the tech, but mainly the community and make sure that everything they do through us makes sense and is long term and not short term.

[9:58] Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, we're building for the future now. And I mean, I've spoken about that in a couple of other conversations this week, but this idea of having a long term vision, not just considering a six month or a one year goal, but a long term vision, like thinking like a tech company, but being a fashion or a media or entertainment company. I think that's very Web3. And yeah, great point and excited to dig into that a little bit further. Thank you, Olivier. Up next, we'd love to pass the mic over to Gala from Tribute Brand and hear a little bit about you. I know that you have been on another of our panels this week, but I would love to, again, for anybody who might not know, hear a little bit more about you and your background with Tribute Brand. I'm the founder of Tribute Brand. I would say one of the most recognizable digital fashion brands on the market at this point.

[10:50] We've launched two years ago, but I've been in this space, in the digital fashion space for the last six years, I would say. My background is actually in traditional fashion. So in parallel, as I was doing digital fashion, I was running a physical fashion brand. And also even before starting Tribute Brand, I've also formed a team. So we focused on AR for digital fashion. So yeah, this is a short story about me. Thanks so much, Gala. Excited to get your inputs and hear a little bit more about some of the activations that I know you've worked on. And, you know, as I said before, the after party, we have to mention it again. Of course, of course. People have to come through. People have to come through.

[11:37] Thank you so much. Excited to have you. And yeah, looking forward to more more inputs from you. Would love to next pass the mic over to Leila from Artisant. Happy that you could join us. And yeah, we'd love to hear more about you and Artisant. Hello, everybody. I'm humbled and happy to be around all of you because I followed your friends for a while and all of you are doing amazing job and have like really strong sides that, you know, together shifts the history of fashion towards digital and makes it more ethical and sustainable. So I'm very happy and proud to be here with you today. My name is Leila. I shifted from my career in TV into digital when I moved to the United States five years ago and I had an AR company. And when I discovered digital fashion, I just started merging into it.

[12:30] And for the past two years, I've been friends with Artisant before that replicant. And last November, I joined the team. I held them to fundraise. And now I'm helping build communication as well as do curated drops with talented NFT artists. I think for Artisant, the main goal is to build this genuine community where every person has a voice. And I guess the beauty of digital fashion is that today, any designer, even the one who works in Afghanistan, you know, in the country where they would never get a shot, had the chance to create and showcase their designs as long as they have decent internet connection software on their computer. One of the most inspiration examples for me of what we did recently was the charity drop that we did to support Ukraine.

[13:24] And one of the designs that was minted is a design that was created in Ukraine a couple of weeks ago. The girl who was a designer at Digital Mary, she refused to leave the country because her husband became a soldier and she wanted to stay closer to him. So she literally created this design in the war zone and now people all over the world can see it, can buy it and, you know, support the country and her personally. So I think this is the beauty of digital fashion, that it can be created and showcased from anywhere and every designer, every creator can have the voice. So this is the focus of Artisant, I think, to bring a lot of beautiful voices from every part of the world. And also as part of it, create educational materials and help designers to be better at this very new form of art, a new form of fashion.

[14:15] We also do interesting collaborations and have a few great drops with crypto artists this year. So I think curated drops, educational materials and building community are like three major things we're focusing on right now. Beautiful. Thanks so much for that Leila and very happy to have you here and looking forward to dig into a little bit more of some of the collaborations that you've done in the past. And also to mention, of course, your activation this week at Fashion Week, of course. Last but most certainly not least, James, James Gobert from Republic, we'd love to hear more about you, your background, Republic and what you stand for in this space, especially from a luxury point of view. Fab. Thanks, David. Thanks, everyone. Lovely to be here today. So where to start?

[15:03] So we launched Republic just over two years ago. We started life off as, I guess, what you've class as a kind of Gen Z fashion, digital fashion house, virtual fashion house. We've actually, I guess, kind of expanded and grown and we're kind of on this journey that I think we're all on for to a greater or lesser degree. We are doing far more work now with other brands. So at Metaverse Fashion Week, we are representing brands like Coach Estamanas, Axo Arigato, Wandler, Osoy, so a whole bunch of what I would class as kind of high street or high end luxury fashion houses where we're effectively taking and working with them to turn in real life physical product into virtual digital wearables.

[15:55] I think for me, as I said, we've been on a journey and digital fashion or virtual fashion is now so much more than garments that look nice or have that kind of that aesthetic beauty to them. It's more about, I guess, kind of creating engaging, immersive consumer experiences, online virtual experiences that ultimately help brands to, firstly, from a revenue perspective with new revenue streams, help them to tap into new target audiences. We did some awesome research last year with a whole bunch of Gen Zs. We went through a whole bunch of luxury fashion brands and tried to understand what their views were on them and they all said, no, don't like that, don't like that. Wouldn't wear that.

[16:42] That's what my mum and dad wears. And we've got this whole kind of new breed of consumer out there, this digital first, virtual first consumer that I think these luxury brands are trying to tap into. And I think virtual fashion is absolutely that key. And I think ultimately by creating those immersive, engaging consumer experiences, that helps these brands to build real kind of loyalty and advocacy with this new customer base that historically they've perhaps not been able to tap into. It's a massive opportunity and a great journey that I think we're probably all on. Absolutely. Absolutely. And looking forward to dig into that a little bit further now. So happy to have you here, James, and excited for your perspective. So now to introduce the topic of today's conversation, what we're going to be talking about, what we all talk about on a pretty regular basis, I'm sure, but this idea of digitizing high

[17:38] fashion, creating fashion beyond the confines of reality, you know, digital craftsmanship, taking the idea of couture and what couture means and bringing that into the metaverse, which essentially comes down to the same word that I said before in digital craftsmanship. That's craftsmanship and the work that goes into garments. And when you can consider that, you know, if thousands of hours can go into physically manufacturing address, thousands of hours can also go into digitally manufacturing a garment. And that's what all of your brands do at a very high level from my perspective. So I want to hear from each of you a little bit more around your ethos and your perspective on digitizing high fashion, what that means, you know, the concepts of, you know, especially from some of your brands going far beyond the confines of reality. And what that means and yeah, just the process from each of your perspectives in terms of,

[18:26] you know, going from maybe brief to concept to final product. What does it mean to have a high fashion garment coming out of a brand today? What is required as an AR filter? Is it a, you know, a photo manipulation? Is it everything that we've seen up to this point? We'd love to get each of your kind of standpoints in terms of what, you know, a high fashion and virtual fashion offering means from each of your companies today. So with all of that being said, we'd love to pass it to each of you and get some points of view. So to kick us off, if it's okay, Kerry would love to hear your perspective. Yeah, great question. Thanks a lot, David. Yeah, it's an interesting world because it's such a new world that it still really needs to be created.

[19:13] There's two different sites to it. Is that one, digital craftsmanship, hardcore manual labor, like it happens in the traditional fashion industry, but we actually have the opportunity to automate and script a lot of tasks, to make it scalable, to be able to spit out millions of assets out of the computers like they do in the gaming industry, like they do in the movies industry. But however, that kind of loses that authentic craftsmanship when it comes down to digital fashion. I'm not the best person to talk about the true digital fashion process. I have fantastic fashion designers in the organization who do that every single day. We have a team, which we call the Fabricant Label, which is a team of seven digital fashion designers.

[19:59] Every single day they're designing digital clothing, digital accessories. The utility cases that we typically talk about is offline rendering. So just like hardcore rendering to create a high quality image or a video, we're doing a lot of AR filters for Snapchat and Instagram. And then of course, doing a lot of optimization for multiple different platforms. As you probably know, to be able to have an asset on Decentraland versus Sandbox versus any other platform, you need to optimize that asset to multiple different places. So you can't just make one asset and that asset can live everywhere. You need to create a real optimization pipeline to bring that asset everywhere. And that's that's a big challenge. And that's where those real pipelines come into place. And even though I think that digital fashion can definitely elevate the fashion game, can really just take it away from the context of physicality to do things that are not possible

[20:56] in the real world. That's the true opportunity in 3D. And I think that's what most of us are also working on and really focusing on. However, I think for me, especially for me and the fabric and the big opportunity is that democratization of the fashion industry. And I've gone through it myself with the film industry. I have a film and visual effects background. And when the smartphone came out, it's just democratized content making. It made everybody a photographer. It made everybody a videographer. All of a sudden, my mom, who never used a camera before, all of a sudden is taking pictures of everything, with her food, of her backyard, posting on Instagram. Essentially, she's a she's a content maker. And I think what we're going to really see in this digital fashion revolution is the ability of non-fashion designers jumping into the space to become so-called fashion designers.

[21:48] Of course, the lead will be taken by the experts, the fashion designers like Gala, who has a true fashion design background, understands patterns, understands sewing and understands the craftsmanship of fashion. But 99 percent of the world, they don't understand how to construct the garments. They don't know how to put it together. And now with digital, we have that opportunity to give the tools to, let's say, the common people, the people who don't necessarily call themselves creatives or fashion designers can all of a sudden have the tools at hand to actually be making their own digital only clothing that they get to wear in their virtual lives. I think that that's the true opportunity. And that's something that we're really focused on, which is automation, scalability, really focusing on creating the technology that will allow this to happen in the mass and then still trying to create that digital craftsmanship and really

[22:47] focus on the beauty of the fashion side of things. Finding that balance between automation and hardcore manual labor or like hardcore creativity is going to be the fine line that we're constantly constantly on the search for. So we have the fashion label, but we also have the platform. And that's something that we're going to be working on for many years to come. Absolutely. Great point. I think we're always kind of toying between going back and forth from, you know, our designs being far too advanced for the technology to, you know, trying to develop the technology to do certain things. So it's kind of like play of like the tech and the creativity and, you know, one kind of influencing the other. And I definitely think that interplay is really relevant now, you know, especially as we try to, you know, especially when we consider places like the central end and on chain environments and how we can bring higher and higher

[23:37] quality garments on chain. So, yeah, really love the work you do and love how you have, you know, like you said, you've turned it into pipelines. You really the way you explain it, I think, makes it really clear to people how, you know, a real business can be built out of virtual fashion, which I'm sure is still foreign to some people, even though obviously the space has gotten to this level by a small group of people. And you've definitely been one of the people, you know, since 2017, 2018, like kind of pushing this forward. So, yeah, huge thanks to you and yeah, excited to get hopefully a few more thoughts from you before we close out this conversation. And, you know, with this idea of virtual craftsmanship in mind, as Kerry mentioned, you know, the people putting in the hours, I would love to pass the mic over to Subham because you and your team obviously are some of the people putting in these hours to create really

[24:24] otherworldly garments. We'd love to hear some of your thoughts on the matter of, you know, again, digital craftsmanship and how your business approaches, you know, the high end of virtual fashion. Sure. So, I mean, yes, it does take a lot of time to be creating these garments. And of course, when you say imagination is the limit, it truly is. When you're creating these high poly versions of your digital fashion. I mean, you could create anything. You could create clothes made of water, fire, anti-gravity. It doesn't matter. Like the physical limitations doesn't matter. And this is what digital fashion enables us to do. But when it comes to designing for the metaverse in games, we still say this is, I mean, you know, imagination is the limit. But of course, the polygons are also a limit. So that is where the truly the craftsmanship comes in play, where we need to, you know, where we I mean, in our first job,

[25:18] like where we converted the high poly models to low ones, like over a million poly counts were converted to less than one percent, which is like thousand five hundred triangles for Decentraland. So that is exactly where we streamline the process. And we make sure that whatever that we design in high poly, we make sure that, you know, it can be suitable and it can be adapted to different platforms. And it's not just that this one high poly to be worn in on a photograph or air, but we want to make sure that we can provide the same design to be wore across different metaverse platforms. Of course, it requires a lot of extensive hard work and it does require to create these different 3D files. But those are the limitations of today's technology. And of course, until we find the solution where we have a complete automated process today, we are working towards this manual process.

[26:10] And our designers are, I would say like they've got probably magic in their hands. I mean, they are able to just create these designs into these low poly versions without losing too much of the actual design elements. Absolutely, absolutely great points. And yeah, I mean, it's obviously difficult. And as I said, you know, it's really the tech and the creativity kind of finding that balance. And I like your point of us trying to push to do both. Let's try to make our pieces available in all of the current fidelities because even something that was, you know, created for Decentraland and obviously that's sometimes a point of contention when brands are trying to enter this space, especially for the first time. But what if they tried to bring the same garment into crypto voxels or sandbox? Not in any way looking down on those platforms. It's just, you know, it's a totally different environment

[26:54] and you have to consider what garments have to look like in those environments. And I mean, it kind of comes down to that. But at the same time, you know, it's also great to, you know, when you consider these limitations, it's almost like you can do anything that you want within these limitations. So it is it is also kind of a fun exercise at the same time. But great points there, Subham. And, you know, when we consider this idea of, you know, digitizing luxury, digitizing high fashion, I think, you know, our next plan, I think, approaches this from a very specific approach, which is experiences and spaces and going beyond and considering the lifestyle of of luxury and what that means in the metaverse. So, Olivier, I'd love to hear some thoughts from you in terms of exclusable and what your approach has been in terms of bringing luxury and bringing high fashion into the metaverse. Yes, for sure. For sure.

[27:44] I think it's interesting because out of all the panelists, I'm the only one who is not a creator of fashion, per se. I'm actually the distributor. I'm the place where brands can distribute their NFTs and, you know, connect with this new wave of collectors. So I work with a lot of creators in the space. And for me, I have to talk to brands every day and open their chakras, show them what this new opportunity is ahead of them. And, you know, because I'm prospecting them and I'm trying to convince them to start their journey into this new territory, very often I start from like a very, very far position in terms of their knowledge and their understanding of the space.

[28:34] And so the best way that I explain what's happening right now is to go back to what they know, what they do, which is craftsmanship. Every, you know, most luxury brands are anchored in heritage, in artisanships and making beautiful products with noble and beautiful materials. And that craft has been honed and developed over centuries or decades. And so when I look at everyone around today on the panel, for me, digital designers are the artisans of the 21st century. And they are basically the trailblazers. They are the pioneers of a completely new vertical. And it's just a matter of time for every single brand, not only luxury, but every single brand out there to open a new business department, like a new division within their architecture of brands, the brand architecture.

[29:31] And they are all going to do just digital products, you know, whether it's fashion, whether it's collectibles, whether it's art, whatever it is, there are so many different types of NFTs that brands can develop. But it's an absolute certainty also because it's the current world that we live in. If we look at the recent results from most luxury brands, they are on fire. They are doing really well in this post-COVID world. There's a big rebound. There's a thirst and a strong appetite for, you know, going back into feeling good about the purchase that you make. But there's also a big sense of responsibility that come with it. And there's also the reality that most distribution channels are completely saturated. Most communication channels are saturated.

[30:20] It's much harder to acquire. It's getting more expensive and harder to acquire new customers. And so there is this gigantic opportunity ahead, which is digitization, turning, you know, your products into digital ones and creating all these experiences through different platforms, whether it's social media or, you know, different metaverse that are being built right now. And so we are at the point where like I'm connecting the dots little by little, it has not the switch has not happened. It has not clicked yet, but it's purely a matter of time. I give it like, I don't know, a year, maybe two years. I don't know. But I know for sure that it will happen. And at that time, there is going to be an immense amount of creativity that will flow into the space and that all of you guys, all of you around the table are going to, you know, be seen as really like the early movers, the pioneers.

[31:24] And it's, you know, it's going to get like more and more intense and more and more exciting, especially as Kerry was saying as the technology is being built and all these limitations are being lifted little by little. So it's a super exciting time right now to be part of Web3. Absolutely. A ton of great points there. And the growth is absolutely exponential. I mean, if you look at the space, I mean, all of us witnessed, you know, even a year or two ago, it's it's insane how much has happened, you know, in the past short period of time, even even if you just kind of track it from in some of our conversations we've had, you know, just tracking it from that announcement of meta last year to now. Just the amount of growth of this industry has received. I think it's incredible. And yeah, really excited to see how space has continued to evolve. And happy that you're one of the people leading that charge,

[32:10] especially for for the luxury space, because, you know, especially in the Web3 space where there is no customer service, where there is no, you know, email to reach out to, you know, we really do require companies and infrastructures to be built and ecosystems to be built in order for people to latch on to. Because otherwise, you know, when people kind of take their first steps into the space, it will be overwhelming as it is for or was for some people, you know, especially in the early days when there when there weren't the open seas and the central lands and, you know, some of these other spaces. But but now, you know, there's more and more of these, you know, touch points. There's more entry points onto the blockchain. And and I think that that's really exciting. So, yeah, thank you so much to the VA for your for your points. And I'm really happy to have you here representing exclusive.

[32:55] Up next, I'd love to pass it over to Gala. And Gala, I know you've worked with a ton of different brands. You've helped bring a whole bunch of brands to the metaverse. But we'd love to think about maybe if you have one or two that you want to mention some case studies of, you know, projects that went really well from your from your opinion in terms of bringing these digital, sorry, bringing these traditional fashion brands into the digital realm. Gala would love to hear some thoughts from you. So, yeah, we did call up with Carlina Herrera. We did call up with John Fogatia. And yeah, I would say it's hard because, you know, those traditional brands are very traditional. So I would say it's kind of our beauty to tell them what the language they they have to speak in. So, you know, around those collaborations, especially, you know, doing adaptations as we spoke earlier, you know, different things looks as you know,

[33:53] HQ photos, something looks different in the central and you have to do sort of, you know, different variations and, you know, some of things look good. Some of them look really bad. You know, if you have really, you know, limited resources. But I would say, you know, what was the most important thing is the idea. And good idea is always very simple and clear one. So it doesn't matter where it is, because, for example, you know, you have Louis Vuitton and Louis Vuitton logo will look good in Minecraft or as you know, high quality render. Yeah, I can see you're scarfed. So basically, you know, it's a it's a it's a thing about conveying this message. And I wouldn't say, you know, the polygon number or something is a is a issue. Totally. Great point. Great point.

[34:44] I mean, obviously, you know, these are just limitations that we have to work within. And, you know, sometimes they can they can be an issue, but we can also, you know, kind of use them as. You know, but the idea is good and good as a good idea is very simple idea that this can be right. It works in any environment. Exactly. And what if we bring it into like Among Us or something or one of these games with like, you know, barely any body, but, you know, you can still bring fashion into these kinds of spaces. So I totally agree with your point. I think that's a great point. And yeah, when if brands want to consider true interoperability, they have to go to everything from a few pixels all the way up to, you know, high fidelity. So I think that that's a great point to consider. Yeah, it's also compare this to art and then you have that hyper realistic art and then you have really simple modernist art.

[35:34] And then you ask her like, what's the heart? What's harder? And then you see, you know, the hardest thing is, you know, it's kind of conveyed this message. Right. Right. If you can do it successfully, it's actually not very easy. Absolutely. Great points. Great points, Bella. I appreciate you being here once again. Would now love to pass it over to Leila. Leila, I know you've also had a chance to work with a whole bunch of exciting brands. I know you're working with Puma this week, you know, for Artesant. And obviously, Artesant has also worked with a number of other brands entering the space. If I might pose the same question, I pose to Gala, you know, this idea of helping brands come into the space and this transition or this shift of bringing a consumer who's used to a tangible physical experience and allowing them to have something similar, at least recognizable in the metaverse. Would love to hear some thoughts from you on Artesant's approach to this matter.

[36:25] Definitely. Thanks for the question. Well, first, I think Artesant is mostly working with brands that are not considered luxury brands. However, overall, since we pay attention to the market, we could see last year, there were like several really awesome NFT drops done by Balenciaga, Dolce and Gucci. And we can see that these brands, they're making a very serious attempt to enter the market. And maybe I should reverse your question from how to make these people who buy traditional products, switch to digital to how to make these traditional brands bring new customers from digital world. Because clearly, this new generation, millennials and Gen Z, and the ones who come after, whose name I don't know yet, they spend more and more time in digital, right?

[37:19] And even today, 70% of luxury purchases are influenced by online interactions. This is the first point of contact with a luxury fashion brand. So it's today, imagine what this number is going to be in five years, in 10 years. So I read the research recently that said that for luxury fashion brands, it's a 50 billion dollar, 50 billion euro revenue opportunity, NFT and Metaverse. So they can really expand their brand. From what I see today, I think this big luxury players are currently digital fashion as a marketing opportunity, a way to enhance brand awareness. And I think they need to see it as that as a diversified revenue stream, because instead of just like switching to digital, they can expand what they do and add digital to it.

[38:11] And of course, there is a lot of criticism around fashion in communication and PR that fashion is not sustainable. It's as a matter of fact, the second most polluting industry. And this is something that all these traditional brands could also leverage and have this point of contact that they produce carbon emissions by integrating digital collections into their brand. As for me personally, I can see the place for both players. If we talk about traditional luxury brands as well as digital native brands and crypto native artists. And I think Artisan is mostly focusing on crypto native artists. And I personally agree with that. I would bet on David against Goliath because it's clearly it's an innovator's dilemma of what is happening today in the fashion space.

[39:03] There is like a set of incredibly revolutionary and new tools. And I think this new young artists who create from their homes and have only software, they have this benefit of being fast and adaptable and flexible as opposed to bigger players who take time to measure risks and read all this reports from Morgan Stanley and GP Morgan before they make their first move in the new space. So I definitely bet on new artists. But I still think that there is a lot that traditional brands could learn and benefit from digital fashion. It's like when we could add sounds to a movie that would have been very stupid of brands if the movie companies continue doing science movies, right?

[39:54] But still like the best actors, the best directors who started doing movies with sound were new directors. That's why I think that in this space too, the best designers will be the designers who started doing it in digital. I think that's a great point, absolutely. And I think that it'll also be interesting to see. I've written articles about this before, but when you try to redefine the idea of luxury, like what is luxury when you consider it in the web3 space? I mean, is owning a crypto punk or a board ape luxury potentially? And for some people that's more of a statement than having, let's say, I wrote an article about this. Again, it's about having like a board ape on an Apple watch versus wearing a Rolex, which one's more expensive, right? Which one's more of a sign of luxury? It's a new dilemma. Yeah, the culture is changing. Yeah, it's a new dilemma.

[40:41] And I think that luxury, it's more of a flex. We're paying this extra thousands of dollars to feel good and to maybe like have a sign in ourselves. It's like going back to semiotics. It's a symbol that I represent something. I belong to certain social class. So with the change of culture and us moving toward spending more time in digital world, I think the flex will be different too. And it's not about having this like $15,000 bag. It's more about, as you said, having a digital ape. I also like what you said about kind of encouraging existing brands to add it to their system because I think a lot of brands, they'll ask a lot of questions and they'll think of them very separately. They're like, how do we enter the metaverse? How do we make NFTs? How do we accept crypto? And it's like, okay, well, you're not thinking, you're thinking of it in a very segmented way when you could just kind of do everything all at once.

[41:31] If you just kind of embraced this web three, mine shows web three space, you could accept crypto by selling things as NFTs in the metaverse. It's not a this or that, it's and. It's more of an inclusive mentality in this space. So I think that's also a really great point. So I'm happy you brought that up. Awesome. Just to close out this round of amazing thoughts. Last but certainly not least, once again, I would love to pass it over to James and hear some of your philosophy on digitizing high fashion and how Republic has approached this space and innovated internally and externally. Philosophy is a bit late in the day to be talking about philosophy. What can I tell you?

[42:18] For me, the biggest thing and the thing I enjoy most is that one of education with brands in prep for metaverse fashion week and the luxury brands that we're working with. Just to give you an example, and the endless creative opportunity that exists in the virtual fashion world and the digital fashion world, I think opens eyes massively when we're working with other brands and the speed to market as well. One of the brands we were working with, we were building a digital version of one of their handbags and we created the handbag in a matter of sort of a day and a half. And we've got by the weekend, you know, three days later, we've got 40 different color options in different fabrics and things that, you know, their minds are blown because in the real world, something like that from a supply chain perspective would take them months.

[43:13] So I think there's a huge amount of education, but I think it's being embraced massively within the luxury space, which is great news. But again, just going back to my points earlier, and I think what Kerry was saying as well, this is far more than that. That the craftsmanship is just one element here. It's the application thereafter. We're speaking to brands about things like digital authentication, proof of ownership, which Olivia will know about, and you know, blockchain and things like that where, you know, they can do more here with a virtual product than you can with a physical counterpart. I think that, again, if I look at the differences and why brands are entering this space, things like, you know, no more overstock, no more wastage.

[44:04] I think Layla was talking about the kind of green message there that no more wastage. No more discounts. You don't see brands discounting virtual clothing, or you don't see NFTs going, you know, 10% off my NFT. You know, the discount, you know, doesn't exist in this world. That depreciation, you know, I don't know many, you know, fashion-based NFT drops that are depreciated in value. Sale on demand, I guess kind of that margin piece that we talked about earlier, I mentioned earlier about the huge margin opportunity for brands is vast. And then you've also got the sort of resale market afterwards as well and that kind of secondary sales and things like that. So I think it's reasons like all of that, and that's why the fashion industry and I guess especially the luxury sub-sector of the fashion industry seems to be embracing the metaverse far more than any other industry out there.

[45:04] I hear of, you know, I think J.P. Morgan opened a banking, you know, McDonald's have opened a fast food restaurant or whatever it might be. But that's one of, that's, you know, one or two organizations. Look at the amount of fashion players that are getting into this space. It's vast. And that's because they see huge opportunity there. Is that philosophical enough for you? No, I think that's perfect. I think that's perfect. And I think it also hopefully helped some people justify, you know, I'm sure a lot of people see some of these big brands, you know, the Gucci's and the Prada's of the world when they're entering the space. Trying to, you know, wrap their heads around that. But when you consider, you know, the upside versus the downside for a brand of that size to make, let's say, a $40,000, $100,000 investment versus miss out on the literal future of digital period. It's really a no brainer.

[45:52] And I think that's why so many people are embracing it now because they see everybody else doing it. And they're like, wait, are we going to miss the train entirely? So, yeah. So also for Oliver's point, Olivia's point, I think that, you know, the next year will be really pivotal in terms of more and more brands. I think we're almost there. I think you're right. We're almost there. But they're still, you know, the wave is still in action, you could say. Yeah. It's moving fast. Yeah, I think there was the Facebook announcement was like a big catalyst, a big change, unexpectedly, but all of a sudden people started taking notice. And now it's on every single brand I talk to, they ask about, okay, what's the limit? First thing on people's minds. And what type of NFT component? Yeah, it's metaverse first, which is very largely misunderstood.

[46:42] And then what type of NFT concept. I think that's a good point to end on though. Because I think as people are, you know, here in metaverse fashion week, I'm sure many people who are watching this right now have been into Central Line before. But I'm sure also a lot of people watching, this might be your first time in the metaverse. You heard about virtual fashion week through Vogue or through, you know, New York Times or one of these outlets. And now you're here and you're experiencing this and you're trying to wrap your head around why you're in this video game, what all of this is, you know, what you can do in this space. But I think that's one of the most exciting parts is, you know, allowing this onward to happen and helping facilitate it. And I'm really happy that this is taking place in the Central Land. I mean, as per today's conversation, are there spaces that we could have higher

[47:20] fidelity models and, you know, utilize, you know, Unreal Engine, et cetera? Sure. But I really do think in terms of on-chain metaverses, this is a really open one. And I think that's a good philosophy to share with people when they're joining the space for the first time is, you know, if you click on something in the Central Land and it links somewhere, you can go to that website. We're not going to keep you here. You know, you can go to that website, you can go to another metaverse, you can go to an AR filter, anything you'd like, you know, you can link out of this space and we promote that interoperability. And I'm really happy that hopefully some people can experience that with this week. Absolutely. So in these closing, you know, thoughts as we're considering all these brand-centering metaverses, unfortunately, we're coming towards the end of this conversation. But I want to pass the mic

[47:59] around the stage one more time and let everybody, you know, give some last inputs we all have some thoughts after today's conversation. And yeah, also, if there's anything that you want to mention in terms of activations happening this week with brands or your brand or otherwise that you're excited for, we'd love to give everybody a chance to do that. So Carrie, would you like to kick us off? Or Olivier, no, please. I see. No, go for it. It's totally fine. No, no. Sorry, I didn't realize you were giving the microwave. But no, I would agree with the perfect segue with what you just said about this Central Land. We are at Excuseebull. We partnered with Hogan, the Italian shoe company, part of Tox Group, to create their first NFT collection and also metaverse activation. And tonight in the Central Land, we are organizing the after party and at 7 p.m. GMT and we have Bob St. Clair, the famous DJ

[48:57] who is going to be spinning at our party. And so you can check like all the details in the Central Land and also on our respective social media channels. I'll be there. I'm looking forward to it. Carrie, do you want to give us any closing thoughts and want to plug anything that you're doing this week? Yeah, sure. I think a closing thought is that, again, the big opportunity is the true kind of web-free ideology, which is about decentralization and community activation. And I think for the digital fashion industry to happen, definitely needs all the different creators, but it also needs community around it. And that's what we're going to be really focusing on for the Central Land Fashion Week, which is to engage our community of creators.

[49:48] So the people who minted on our season one on the African studio platform, their own digital fashion items, they're going to be running their own shows. They are going to be the models on the catwalk. They are going to be the creative directors of the fashion show. So it's not any more about that lone wolf creative director who made this whole collection by themselves, even though they had a team around them, it's not any more about this massive hierarchy of how typical fashion companies are run. It's really about the decentralized ethos about co-creation, working together to create something much, much larger than any company, than any other individual can do by themselves. And that's what we're focusing on for the Central Land Fashion Week, but that's what we're also focusing on for everything else that's coming.

[50:36] Yeah. Awesome, awesome. Thank you so much for being here today, Carrie. I love everything you and what the Fabrikan does. And yeah, I hope that everybody gets a chance to go check out all of your beautiful activations this weekend, experience co-creation in the metaverse. Luxury can be, you know, for the community, for and by the community. So I think that's very exciting. Awesome. Thank you so much again. Up next, we'd love to pass it to Gala. Sorry, we're moving things around. It's just I had a shift on my screen, but Gala would love to hear from you if you have any closing thoughts or I wanted to mention once again your after party this week. Right. Yeah, we're also doing an after party. We were like, you know, we have our story in the Central Land. So, you know, after party is always better than a show. And we were like, let's do an after party and we are going to draw variables on that party.

[51:28] So it's going to be our first Decentraland variables. We've specifically developed those variables to look great in Decentraland. And on that after party, we'll be having Icycope. He's a DJ and a famous YouTuber from the fashion community. Awesome. I believe that's Friday. I'm not mistaken. Friday. Awesome. Well, we'll see you there. Thanks so much, Gala. Really happy you could join us once again here on the main stage. Up next, we'd love to pass it over to Leila. Leila, would you have any closing thoughts and would you like to let people know where they can see Artisan this week? Thanks so much. I learned a lot during this panel. And I hope everyone could check out our pop-up store at the Royal World Fresh Creep Zone.

[52:22] We are presenting an upcycled wedding collection that we did in collaboration with the brand Puma, which is a very interesting mix of wedding and sports. So come check it out. We'll definitely check out your up to parties. That sounds very exciting and we all deserve to party after working hard and preparing for this week. And, of course, I want to say that we're a group of very, I hope, creative people who got into digital fashion, not from a standpoint of increasing profits, but mostly from the standpoint of curiosity and making the fashion a better place. So as early adopters, I think we'll look at things not as competitors, but more as collaborators. So please feel free to reach out to me.

[53:08] I'll be happy to brainstorm, give feedback, and ask questions because I have a lot of questions to all of you guys. And to all of you who's listening to this panel, I'm also open to answering questions, whether you're a designer, an artist, or just someone who wants to learn more. Awesome. Thanks so much, Leila. Very true to Web3. I love it. Up next, James. Any closing thoughts or activations you want to mention that are happening this week? So my closing thought is I've clearly aged significantly because I didn't know any of those DJs that either Gala or Olivia mentioned. So I'm clearly far too old for this. Although I will be coming to check them out. So I think, look, we're on the cusp of something pretty big here.

[53:56] I think we all know that. I think the next 12 months are super exciting for all of us. I think we are moving from education to adoption and more mainstream usage, which is super exciting. I think I'd just echo what Leila was saying. One of the key words for me is collaboration, co-creation, working together. I've never worked in an industry whereby people collaborate as well and are fighting for the same cause as they are in this industry. And I think that's kind of, you know, for me is super important and reassures me that we're all half decent people working towards the same goal and looking to do some really cool stuff together, which is great. And yeah, if you've got five minutes, go and check out our pop-up store. We're in the luxury fashion district. Thanks so much, James.

[54:42] And we'll definitely check that out. Highly recommend everybody check out the UNXD area. If you haven't yet at this point in the week, you will not regret it. Last but certainly not least, you've moved around in our order, but you're still here and very happy to have you. Subhab would love to hear if you have any closing thoughts or anything you'd like people to check out live into Centralland this week. So I've been super excited for the fashion week. I mean, like, I haven't met my designers for over two years. I've been working with them over Zoom calls and just messages, but it's the closest to being real that I'm going to be meeting them during the fashion week. So I'm super excited and I'm super excited probably to meet all of you, all your avatars inside of Decentraland.

[55:29] And I mean, probably in the real world, it's not possible where you're going to see, you know, so many high-end luxury brands and the emerging digital fashion startups also coming into a fashion week together. So it's, you know, probably going to be the new age of fashion weeks in the metaverse. Probably this is more. We'll get to see more of this. And about our activation. Yep, definitely. You must check it out because I've been working hard on it. I've been designing it. I'm an architect. So I've been working on this pop-up store. So we've just created an experience. Like, we just didn't want to, you know, just be any display of a mannequin, you know, a fashion mannequin. But we created an experience. We've inbuilt a lot of SDKs here. A lot of things that probably you cannot do in the real, you know, a fashion showroom.

[56:15] But what you can do inside of a metaverse, we've given the best of the best experience for people to come and experience our fashion. So you should do it. You should definitely check it out. It's in the Crypto Valley. Awesome, awesome. Go check out Crypto Valley. Make sure to head over to Crypto Valley because you'll see, you'll see Ex-Arpitor. You'll also see the Cash Labs Gallery where a whole bunch of other things are taking place. So yeah, appreciate that. Thank you so much for being here. And yeah, thank you to all of our panelists for joining us here today and appreciate everybody who's tuned in and listened all the way to the end, whether it's live here in Decentraland or after the fact. This is once again our last panel today, but we're going to be doing more panels tomorrow. So definitely come back here on the main stage and check them out once again. Again, thank you to all of our panelists.

[57:00] Make sure to go check them all out and follow them. Their socials are linked and appreciate everybody. Enjoy Metaverse Fashion Week. Have a great time. Buy some wearables. Experience digital fashion in a whole new way. Enjoy. Thanks everybody.

David Cash https://www.davidcash.ca