Do I have to talk about Meta? I'd rather talk about beauty "entering the chat" and Elle Kazakhstan
I was almost finished writing this week’s newsletter when I realized I didn’t even give a thought to Meta, Facebook’s rebrand. Maybe it’s because there’s not much to say yet? I’ve already stated that I think Instagram is already a metaverse in which people live much of their lives. Let’s just acknowledge that and uplevel it. The funniest/cringiest moment of the rebrand? This tweet.
Makes my skin crawl. Just me?
Mindblowing (for me at least) article about the waste in online returns
After reading this article, with the even-more-than-I-imagined waste from online returns, it seems like this is a no brainer to start implementing AR (augmented reality) try-on. When I think about the concrete, near-term benefits of digital fashion, supply chain operations are definitely top of mind. Is there a secret I’m missing, where people are lazy and they don’t often return things effectively, and that retailers are loathe to give up those somewhat passive purchases by implementing technology that would get people to order less? Is this an accounting question? Can you report revenue based on total orders, disregarding returns? Comment with your thoughts.
Speaking of saving the earth with digital fashion- Burberry/Farfetch/DressX ran an influencer campaign digitally to save production resources (and cash money, let’s be real.) Seems like a win-win, not to mention a key way for platforms like DressX to make money while waiting for the consumer use cases to develop for digital fashion. See also Elle Kazakhstan’s latest cover, also virtual. Having started my career in fashion pr, shipping samples all over the world, this solves some serious environmental concerns. What it doesn’t save is junior pr people from being able to say, “oh, sorry, the look is with Vogue, you can’t have it” (you’re totally uncool or a3rd rate publication we’d never loan runway to). I pity them.
Personality of the week: Emma Jane Mackinnon-Lee. Kind of a wild biography, from dropping out of uni, starting a “black swan” hedge fund and then starting a Web3 Fashion Operating System Digitalax, because “fashion is something that will be persistent into the next 50 years.” (paraphrase)
This platform is one of the ones promoting the “anarchy” option of metaverse fashion, e.g. no trad brands, just niche vendors selling to their communities. You might consider this as the natural limit of the fashion creator economy. The creator economy is a way to explain the unbundling of taste and content. Anyone can sell their ideas and perspective(or naked pics), to anyone else, quickly and seamlessly. This is also the natural end of magazines, long coming, why subscribe to a monolith like Vogue when you can follow 10 influencers who far more accurately create content for your taste, budget, or aspiration? OR read Digifizzy, Digitalax’s decentralized, web3 fashion magazine, where you pay for the articles/content you want. What it lacks in art direction, it certainly makes up for in innovation.
Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are another natural extension of the creator economy. If your creative ability is writing code, press releases, excel spreadsheets, whatever, why wouldn’t those skills be divided and spread amongst multiple organizations? We’re on trend to decouple work output from the ideas of community and perhaps even corporations that come with co-located work.
Red DAO
That “deep thought” aside, let’s talk more about Red DAO. This decentralized autonomous syndicate, essentially, bought the D&G crown, and according to this Yahoo interview, now they get to all go to the special brand activations that come with the purchase? That seems like taking the piss out of the exclusivity idea. And then they’re going to loan the crown to Snoop Dog? One of the purported benefits of NFTs is that the creator retains some control and/or an opportunity to capitalize on the upside. How does this work if a syndicate ownership loans out the crown? Not to mention the issue of lack of interoperability, you’ll only be able to wear the crown in one platform/metaverse, so would Snoop make that choice?
Here’s a great tweet explaining a DAO if, unsurprisingly, it’s not rolling off your tongue yet.
Clinique has launched a series of NFTs. One of the reasons we haven’t heard a lot about beauty is because exclusivity and lipstick don’t make too much sense; there’s not so much joy in owning a limited edition if it doesn’t look good on you. Winners of Clinique’s NFT “ will receive the NFT, the physical Black Honey product and, in a twist designed to deepen loyalty, a decade’s worth of product, meted out once per year over ten years.” so that’s a way of creating access to an exclusive club. But I’m not sure how this translates into using the product in the metaverse. In fact, after much googling, I’m not sure what the NFT “IS.” Art representing their most popular products? See image. This WWD article did highlight one interesting NFT beauty avenue, nail art, which, like all art, is ripe for artists to claim ownership and sell access to their work. Intriguing.
