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Hope springs eternal in the world of fashion. Luxury digital fashion platform Syky, launched in November by Ralph Lauren former chief digital and content officer Alice Delahunt, has chosen its first cohort of emerging creatives to join its incubator, called the Syky Collective. The goal? To turn these creatives into household names.
With coaching from experts in fashion, business and technology, the participants will be supported to launch debut digital fashion collections throughout the year, sold via Syky’s platform — with the potential to add physical products, too. In exchange, Syky receives 5 per cent ownership in their business.
The list of selected designers and brands covers 10 countries including China, Italy, The Dominican Republic, South Africa and Nigeria. The brand names, which may be largely unfamiliar to mainstream fashion now, are: Pet Liger, Stephy Fung, GlitchOfMind, Calvyn Dylin Justus, Taskin Goec, Fanrui Sun, Nextberries, Gustavo Toledo, Felipe Fiallo and Jacqueline Jade.
The first-of-its-kind programme, announced in April, is designed to be a hybrid between Silicon Valley incubator Y Combinator and a traditional scholarship from one of fashion’s organising bodies, such as the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) or the British Fashion Council (BFC). The selection was made by Syky’s leadership team, with input from the BFC and the Collective’s mentors, who bridge the fashion-tech divide. They include Calvin Klein CMO Jonathan Bottomley, Vogue creative editorial director Mark Guiducci (Vogue and Vogue Business are both owned by Condé Nast), Red DAO founding member Megan Kaspar, investor and metaverse expert Matthew Ball and Sabine Le Marchand, creative director at creative agency Frosty.
Over the next few months, the Syky-backed creatives will receive coaching from the mentors and follow proprietary curriculum developed by Syky, as well as curriculum developed and used by the BFC.
The digital fashion startup will select 10 emerging designers to join its inaugural Syky Collective, who will have access to mentorship, education and fashion partnerships before launching collections via Syky.
Similar to many emerging designers in the traditional fashion industry, the creatives taking part are seeking business acumen, industry introductions, investors and any tools that will help them scale their product offering and customer base. The difference is that digital fashion business models are uniquely reliant on new technology.
“On the business side of things, I’m not so clued up on, especially being a creative,” says Fung, a British-Chinese designer with a background in graphic design, who has partnered with companies such as Paco Rabanne, Jo Malone and Snapchat. “I’ve done everything myself in terms of the creation, the marketing. I’m slowly realising that having some support will be extremely useful.”
“It’s important for designers to not just be designers and not just be creative directors. They also need to have the operational chops or the operational support to grow and scale their business,” Delahunt says.
The process is partly about opening doors and winning a stamp of approval from a team with fashion and luxury provenance. Besides Delahunt, Syky’s staff includes COO Roxanne Barretto Iyer, who has worked in senior roles at the Estée Lauder Companies, Ralph Lauren and L’Oréal; CTO Jonathan Bennett and creative director Rachel Crowther both worked with Delahunt at Burberry. Syky has also received at least $10.5 million in funding, led by Alexis Ohanian’s VC firm Seven Seven Six.
A core focus was ensuring fairness, so the first group of finalists was scored based on their portfolios alone, with their name, gender and locations removed. During a final interview stage, they were asked the same four questions with the same time limit allotted for each.
Frosty’s Le Marchand, whose clients include Prada, Calvin Klein and Burberry, participated in the selection process. Le Marchand says that, beyond evaluating design skills, she was looking at an ability to tell compelling stories, which has historically driven the great names of luxury. “There is an art to storytelling that can transform and elevate design irrespective of whether it’s physical or digital. It was more about looking for designers who revealed a sense of themselves or expressed an interesting sensibility and distinct perspective through their work.”
This ability builds longevity, says Delahunt, who deployed storytelling through new technologies while holding senior roles at Ralph Lauren and Burberry. “The best brands, and the brands that have sustained for the longest in the fashion industry, are those that have had major campaigns. And that doesn’t mean major budget, that means major moments that have really cut through; they’ve put creative storytelling front and centre.”
Early movers
Syky’s incubator programme is a first, but it joins a host of other creative talents, startups and investors hoping to emerge as the so-called “picks and shovels” for fashion in Web3, meaning they aim to be the underlying enablers to the emerging field. It’s been a relatively quiet year for big announcements, but Web3 leaders have identified this period as ideal for “build mode”, giving brands — and the talents and tech startups that aid them — a space to establish more stable long-term strategies.
Last week, the World Economic Forum selected Syky as the only fashion company in its list of 2023’s 100 most promising technology companies. Meanwhile, the second cohort of Farfetch’s Dream Assembly Base Camp — an incubator created in partnership with venture firm Outlier Ventures — has been coaching tech startups focused on digital fashion and Web3, while digital fashion platform DressX has raised another $15 million. Digital fashion game Drest, founded by former fashion magazine editor Lucy Yeomans, has also announced an additional £15 million in funding.
It’s not only startups that are ramping up. The world’s leading brands are showing signs of taking digital products and Web3 seriously. In the past month, Pharrell Williams’s debut as artistic director of Louis Vuitton men’s included a product available only to the brand’s short list of NFT holders. Nike recently sold more than $1 million in digital sneaker NFTs while Apple has announced Apple Vision Pro, an augmented reality and virtual reality headset intended to integrate 3D objects into our daily lives. “You know, some say the metaverse is dead. Then Apple introduces spatial computing. So, you know, we’re all talking about the same thing. We’re just calling it different names,” says Delahunt.
“Early movers often have the advantage,” Frosty’s Le Marchand says, adding that fashion has already been through similar transformations, such as with the introduction of e-commerce and social media. “It’s usually the people at brands who experiment, learn and build early who enjoy access or credibility and the power to lead — when everyone else is catching up.”
Building toward the new normal
The Syky Collective’s designers and brands have started by identifying short-term business needs. The Dominican Republic’s GlitchOfMind, a visual artist and photographer who works with a blend of VR sculpting and artificial intelligence for 3D avatars, says the programme will provide much-needed feedback and validation as they mature as a designer. Pet Liger, a Web3 footwear brand based in Cyprus that was recently recognised by Gucci Vault, is hoping to reward current collectors with “something really epic”, such as a capsule collection with a larger brand.
Many of the designers see the possibilities of a physical element to their work. Fung, whose inspiration is a merge of her British and Chinese identity, hopes to create an AR collection, but her community is already showing interest in physical versions of her designs.
Pet Liger has received requests for physical versions of the brand’s high heels and he’s interested in the idea of adding “on-chain” capabilities, such as assigning them an NFT identity that could provide future community perks and digital twins in the vein of Louis Vuitton’s recent Treasure Trunk NFT. Rather than trying to replace traditional fashion with digital options, Pet Liger argues that the goal is to “expand upon it with another layer of effortless, constant connectivity, practicality and creativity”.
The designers also want to disrupt the way that fashion is shown. Brazil’s Toledo, whose inspirations span biomolecular science and ballroom culture, envisions interactive fashion shows — replete with choreography, 3D projects and moving catwalks — that expand beyond the concept of models walking in a line. ”I want to make people cheer, people cry. I m telling a story,” Toledo says.
Many have already received nods from fashion and culture leaders. Ecuadorian footwear designer Fiallo has collaborated with Stella McCartney and Puma; Nigeria’s Nextberries has made physical versions of its designs for musician Erykah Badu. South Africa’s Calvyn Dylin Justus and the United States’s Jacqueline Jade were both highlighted at a New York Fashion Week party hosted by Syky, Calvin Klein and i-D magazine.
Beyond that, the designers all nurture dreams of building the next big luxury fashion brand — without the “digital” adjective. “This isn’t the ‘physical’ fashion industry, this isn’t the ‘digital fashion’ industry. This isn’t the ‘established’ fashion industry or the ‘Web3’ fashion industry,” Delahunt says. “This is just the evolution of the fashion industry.”
Fung wants to be a household name. Toledo wants to inspire a global community. Pet Liger wants to be a top fashion house of the future. “As technology improves and everything becomes more seamless in terms of experience, immersion and interaction, it will be normal,” Pet Liger says. “We won’t even be describing things as ‘digital’ or ‘virtual’. I see Pet Liger shoes being at the Met Gala. I see them being at the Cannes Film Festival. If you own a Pet Liger NFT or digital wearable, then you should be able to wear it anywhere.”
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