American womenswear designer and 2024 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund finalist Kate Barton is known for pieces that fool the eye with unconventional materials and silhouettes. When you Google her name, “goldfish bag” is among the top suggested terms, and her silk dresses, when photographed, often look as though they are cast in metal. Her fantastical work has been worn by Beyoncé and Katy Perry and spotted in Emily in Paris.
With her work pushing expectations of form, Barton makes an ideal partner for Syky, the digital fashion startup aiming to bridge the gap between traditional, physical fashion and digital design. “Her stuff is very experimental and futuristic-looking, but also very wearable in a weird way,” says Syky artistic director Nicola Formichetti, who has been tasked with sourcing artistic collaborators whose communities and aesthetics lend themselves to the type of futuristic pitch that Syky is making: our lives will be increasingly lived online, and our personas will need something to wear.
On 5 December, Barton and Syky will introduce a new bag, marking the first time the designer has offered phygital goods. The exclusive dusty sky blue colourway, a reinterpretation of Barton’s popular Pierced Leather bag, will be available as both an NFT and a physical piece for $495. People can digitally try on the bag in a virtual world designed with metallic textures, reflective surfaces and water elements that reference Barton’s designs. Only 20 will be available (both digitally and physically) until 9 January, when Barton will then produce the bags sold.
Already, Barton’s work has created an illusion around what is what, and she says people often comment that they love how her website’s homepage “was made with artificial intelligence” (it’s not). This new project, she feels, will only add to the conversation. “The digital world sparks a lot of intrigue, especially on social media,” she says. “I’ve noticed this unintentionally through what we have done, which is garments that give the illusion to this AI, digital world. There is so much virality and conversation around that.”
This project with Burton is the sixth curated by Syky’s Formichetti in the past year. (Formichetti is a designer and stylist who is most widely known as a previous artistic director of Diesel as well as Lady Gaga’s long-time collaborator.) Prior collaborations include those with LVMH Prize finalist Julie Paskal on a series of limited-edition, phygital petal key cases; artist Marc Tudisco, who made digital, metallic-looking face and body coverings; and an Apple Vision Pro experience, with Japanese designer Kunihiko Morinaga. That’s on top of collaborations with Syky Collective members and digital creators, including Calvyn Justus, FvckRender, Fanrui Sun and KWK, occasionally launched via physical events that display the physical alongside the digital.
More broadly, it has been a relatively quiet time for Web3 fashion, as collectors weather falling crypto prices and brands move innovation and marketing efforts to projects that use generative AI. According to the Vogue Business NFT Tracker, which highlights fashion and beauty NFT projects, the timeline of branded drops has largely shifted from a firehose to a slow drip, lowering from multiple entries a week to a few each month.
But early signals point to a recent shift in tone. LVMH-owned beauty brand Guerlain just opened a new experience on Web3 real estate platform The Sandbox, along with a handful of wearable digital accessories sold as NFTs. Balenciaga’s leather case for crypto and NFT hardware wallets from Ledger became available earlier this month (replete with an NFT collectible), and in September, five hoodies from Web3 fashion startup Mmerch sold via a Christie’s auction for a total of more than $37,500. The value of Bitcoin was up more than 40 per cent in two weeks. Ethereum is up 40 per cent in the past month. (A more recent dip suggests that might not hold.)
This is both due to recent news events — President-elect Donald Trump has indicated he’ll take a crypto-friendly stance, leading to enthusiasm and momentum from the crypto crowd — and due to the ongoing maturation of Web3 tech and digital lives. Proponents hope that the new phase will bring more level-headed, long-term investment. Syky founder and CEO Alice Delahunt points to Fortnite’s digital sneakers with Nike, Disney’s investment in Fortnite parent company Epic Games and the popularity of Roblox fashion game ‘Dress to Impress’. “Anyone who’s been deeply in this space has been preparing for what we see is coming out of this bear cycle and into the next bull run,” Delahunt says.
Sebastien Borget, COO and co-founder of The Sandbox, says that its most recent “season” attracted 500,000 unique players, “shattering” the previous player and engagement records during the peak Web3 boom. Borget looks at loyalty and engagement as offering brand appeal.
Brands, designers and consumers have also had more time to digest what it means to buy and wear digital fashion or to spend time in virtual worlds. Many have also reconciled that this doesn’t mean escaping reality — despite the add-on impact of grappling with the notion of AI-generated characters and images to further boggle the mind. Formichetti says that conversations with potential Syky collaborators have become easier. There’s less explaining to do. “The space is becoming more mixed… and the fashion now is becoming merged. Before, we used to convince people and explain what these things are, but now people are so in tune — and some are like Kate [Barton].”
Barton is imaginative, but like most young designers, she also has to be practical. She had not yet used digital tools and says that she would have been unlikely to have the time to build a digital or NFT offering herself, given the pressures of running a fledgling fashion business. But she sees interest from her community. “You’ve come to the right place,” Formichetti smiles during a conversation between the two with Vogue Business. The made-to-order, flexible model of NFT drops is also part of the appeal, especially at a time when brands are looking to divorce their processes from minimum runs and traditional wholesale partnerships that require incredible upfront costs from the designer.
That’s why Barton has focused on a direct-to-consumer model. “We listen to what people are wanting and then do drops in terms of what we know will sell, then gradually move up, whether it’s made-to-order or a production run. We are good now at guessing what that is,” Barton says. Starting slow and special, like the 20-piece Syky project, is in line with that strategy and an approach she’s found to be important to her creative audience.
Digital design and limited-edition monthly drops are very “freeing” for fashion, says Formichetti. “With a drop with physical items, you know you have a lot of rules and minimums and production. And if we are changing designers every month, it’s impossible to do that.”
Delahunt sees the surge in AI experiments, which have picked up where Web3 left off in terms of the tech hype cycle, as complimenting, rather than competing with, blockchain-based works. “At our very core, we are building on-chain. As blockchain goes through more waves of adoption and as AI continues to rise, we think it’s going to be more important than ever to be on-chain and have digital assets that are verifiable. Because with AI manipulation, or AI edits of designer brands, it’ll be increasingly difficult to understand what’s real and what’s not,” she says.
Syky is also hoping to continue to make it less risky for brands to experiment. Aspiring digital designers can now sell their works on the Syky platform, and Syky has hosted sessions with tech platforms, including Epic Games and Clo3D, alongside educating major fashion houses on digital fashion. “In terms of bridging a gap, there’s always a clunkiness, and education is always one of the most important things that we can do,” says Delahunt, whose background is leading digital projects at Burberry and Ralph Lauren. She encourages brands to consider what feels right for them — specifically, outside of hype or short-term “noise” in the market — the same questions she used to put to her own teams.
“The reason I love the fashion industry is for its ability to experiment and innovate. That’s why I personally get so excited about working with these amazing digital designers to launch their collections or even just tap into their imaginations of where the future of fashion shows and fashion will go — because this future is inevitable and the traditional industry is incredibly embracing of it,” she says.
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