Luxury digital fashion platform Syky could have just hit the scene in January, but is already aiming to redefine it by joining forces with the British Fashion Council for a recent incubator program, Syky Collective.

A Tuesday announcement revealing the inaugural cohort of 10 digital fashion designers merely mentioned the BFC as a mentor, in an inventory that included Jonathan Bottomley, Calvin Klein’s chief marketing officer, Red DAO’s Megan Kaspar, Vogue creative editorial director Mark Guiducci, Frosty creative director Sabine Le Marchand and writer and Metaverse expert Matthew Ball.

Nevertheless, the BFC’s involvement goes a bit deeper than that. The council will link its own NewGen program for emerging designers to the Syky Collective with a recent course-sharing agreement, Alice Delahunt, Syky’s founder and chief executive officer, exclusively told WWD.

“The British Fashion Council NewGen have seen among the most incredible designers of our time undergo, from Lee (Alexander) McQueen to Stella McCartney to Christopher Kane. It is actually inspiring,” she said. “Now you’ve gotten a terrific group of 10 emerging global designers who’re digital designers first and a few physical designers who will get access to the British Fashion Council’s NewGen curriculum.”

From Syky, the brand new designer collective will study constructing a brand, digital worlds and Web 3.0, she explained. Those courses can get somewhat tactical, from social media brand-building, community and the importance of designers telling their stories, to establishing a legal entity and fundraising, with mock pitch rounds planned with a few of Syky’s investors. Throughout the yr, they will even have access to the total curriculum from BFC NewGen, including courses on international trade, mental property, raising capital and more.

The partnership works each ways, granting NewGen designers access to any of Syky’s master classes as well. The goal is to support emerging fashion design talent, as they morph from being a designers to executives as well.

“The bi-directionality of the shared wisdom and knowledge between the British Fashion Council’s NewGen program, in addition to this proprietary program, is a extremely big step for the industry,” Delahunt added, “because now we have the chance to speak and to onboard a recent generation of designers specifically from the British Fashion Council into digital design, into Web 3.0, to elucidate what’s occurring within the space, and the BFC have the chance for global designers to access such an incredible program that they run.”

It’s an ambitious play, especially for a newcomer. The Syky platform officially debuted just this past January, however it already raised $9.5 million in Series A funding — led by Seven Seven Six, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s investment firm — released NFTs and announced its intention to create the Syky Collective incubator program in April. In June, the platform was also distinguished as one in every of the World Economic Forum’s “Technology Pioneers” for 2023.

“Syky and its fellow pioneers are on the forefront of innovation and disruption needed to assist us solve the world’s most pressing issues,” said Verena Kuhn, WEF’s head of innovator communities, in an announcement. “We sit up for their contribution to the Forum’s content work that brings together the private and non-private sector to tackle these global issues.”

Delahunt has built a profession navigating fashion’s digital landscape in positions as Ralph Lauren’s chief digital and content officer and global director of digital and social at Burberry. But at Syky, her role now expanded to ambassador of digital fashion. As such, the WEF invited her to work with global leaders to assist address key industry and societal issues.

When asked what she thinks of critics declaring that the metaverse is over, she didn’t blink. For the Syky founder, it’s only a matter of separating the signal from the noise.

“We’ve all heard the metaverse is dead, but then it was reborn a couple of weeks ago, rebranded as spatial computing via Apple,” she said. “The fact is, these worlds are blurring… I did the primary digital fashion partnership with Bitmoji and Ralph Lauren back in 2020, and inside a brief period of time, tens of thousands and thousands of Bitmojis were wearing Ralph Lauren. It’s this digital way of expressing themselves.

“If you have a look at the revenue of Fortnight, it is bigger than the revenue of Prada, of Bottega, of Burberry,” she added. “So similar to take a second on that — the style revenue that’s on Fortnight is bigger than among the biggest fashion houses that exist today.”

Obviously Delahunt believes fashion’s digital revolution remains to be very much in play, and he or she desires to make sure that the rising class of luxury designers and types, like Pet Liger, are prepared for it.

If the name rings a bell, it might be because of the young brand’s work with Gucci Vault or their collab’s appearance on the Over augmented reality event on the Piazza Del Duomo in March. Such experiences highlight a core theme for Constantinos Panayiotou, the creative force behind Pet Liger, that digital fashion isn’t just continuing on, it’s evolving, necessarily so.

“As our world keeps on shifting towards the digital domain, we’ve got to determine learn how to validate the price inside these fresh virtual realms,” said Panayiotou. “Blockchain, also generally known as Web 3.0, is getting slicker, and more streamlined by the minute. Sure, it’s not perfect … [but] I feel just like the space is beginning to mature and numerous the buzzwords are beginning to disappear, which is sweet.

“It’s an inevitable evolution that ought to be allowed to occur naturally and incrementally. However it’s definitely happening.”

Pet Liger is among the many Syky Collective’s first cohort, which the corporate described as a various array of talent hailing from the Dominican Republic, China, Nigeria, Italy and more. In all, the inaugural class represents 10 countries and spans multiple approaches to luxury digital fashion.

This system introduces the cohort as follows: