Lablaco’s CFS HUB Returns – Meet The 2022 Class of Science and Fashion Catalysts Leading Web3 Innovation, Digitization, and Circularity

PAIGE SILVERIA

FASHION / SCIENCE
18 November

Lablaco’s CFS HUB Returns – Meet The 2022 Class of Science and Fashion Catalysts Leading Web3 Innovation, Digitization, and Circularity

The catalysts premiere exclusively in the SPIN Metaverse on 8 December and for the first time, IRL, with an immersive installation at Galeries Lafayette Champs-Élysées, early next year.

As part of CFS Summit 2022, lablaco announces the science innovators, fashion designers, and partners for this year’s CFS HUB.

CFS HUB is a playground for boundary-breaking innovation. The platform curates artists, solutions, and creators, and provides a space to accelerate the transition toward a digitized circular fashion system. Every year, CFS discovers and curates bold innovators and designers who are providing better ways to design, produce, communicate, and sell, shining the light on these changemakers during the annual CFS Summit, globally.

For its fourth annual launch, 8 – 11 December 2022,CFS Summit 2022 — the world’s largest annual VR gathering dedicated to luxury fashion, culture, and technology — brings forward designers with a strong vision for the phygital future to feature at CFS HUB. From using digital twins to replace physical prototypes, to designing inside VR, the selected talents understand the value of next-generation digitization to help solve the industry’s physical environmental issues. The CFS HUB Fashion Catalysts are MLLN, Dhruv Kapoor, Karoline Vitto, Raquel de Carvalho, SCRY, 8IGB Community Clothing, Chu Suwannapha, Wilsonkaki, bettter, and Published by.

The CFS HUB Science Catalysts are embracing science as a method for retail evolution. This group of 14 companies is leveraging digital technologies to improve production processes with digital previews, made to order, material science and AI scanning for made to measure, and to reinvent consumption with product timeline transparency, AR visualizations and direct-to-avatar try-ons. The CFS HUB Science Catalysts include EOS, YOU MAWO, Heartdub, Hey! Fashion by Eileen Fisher Foundation, PlatformE, THE REMADE, SPIN Connect, FibreTrace, circular.fashion, Dapper Labs, Polybion, Colorifix, PYRATEX, and Worn Again.

CFS HUB will also host a series of NFT galleries featuring Phygital NFT art and fashion from ISKO, Vogue Philippines, and Fondazione Sozzani. 

ISKO, a century-old leading global textile company, will showcase garments from their new Ctrl-Z line. Referencing the “going back” command used on keyboards, ISKO’s new approach to material science, Ctrl-Z, offers denim out of entirely regenerated cellulose and GRS-certified recycled (cotton and polyester) fibers. The result is superior-quality denim, identical to traditionally produced constructions, yet more durable and sustainable. 

For their gallery space, Vogue Philippines will be presenting a sneak peak of “Paraiso,” their first metaverse fashion editorial from the December/January issue. The visuals feature avatars created by Ivan Medrano, wearing various iterations of the terno — a traditional Filipino dress — reimagined by a selection of designers, and digitized by lablaco and DressX. Set in a digital bukid (field) imagined by Biaca Carague, the backdrop brings to virtual life, the lush landscapes of the Philippines. 

Following the success of the recent release of the digitization of Vogue Italia’s Editor-in-Chief, Franca Sozzani’s couture archive, SPIN and Fondazione Sozzani will again collaborate on the presentation of the phygital garments for this year’s summit. The partnership displays the practicality and utility of Phygital NFTs and blockchain beyond hype. Due to its decentralized blockchain foundation, SPIN creates a transparent and secure avenue to trade, own, and trace the phygital garments in perpetuity. This establishes a new circular product life cycle, shifting the user experience from consumption to ownership of garments, and re-writing the possibilities of retail and resale.

CFS HUB is supported by Luxury Innovation Partner Kering, and their Material Innovation Lab, which, created in 2013, is dedicated to the sourcing of sustainable materials and fabrics. Through MIL, Kering supports CFS Hub Designers with the knowledge of new materials development. Our Industry Partner, Modem, provides working tools and professional information sources, dedicated to those who operate in the fields of fashion and design. Modem is supporting CFS HUB Fashion Catalysts by connecting them with the world of fashion through international showrooms and platforms. Our Retail Partner, Galeries Lafayette Champs-Élysées is located at 60 avenue des Champs-Elysées in Paris since 2019. The Galeries Lafayette Champs-Elysées store aims to offer its Parisian, French and international visitors a completely new retail model, in line with new forms of consumption. With the largest retail spaces of the avenue, this 6,500 sq.m. concept presents an inspiring and surprising product selection as well as exclusive collaborations and events, to provide its clients with a unique shopping experience amplified by architecture and digital innovations. Additionally, Galeries Lafayette Champs-Élysées will support CFS HUB Fashion Catalysts and Science Catalysts with a Web3 circular retail activation.

Galeries Lafayette Champs-Élysées Store View

CFS HUB will premiere at both the digital twin of the Grand Palais Éphémère in the SPIN metaverse, as well as IRL via the first meta-retail experience with Europe’s largest luxury retail group, Galeries Lafayette, at their most iconic store on Champs-Élysées. The activation will take over the whole of Galeries Lafayette’s atrium area with creative installations and immersive extended reality (XR) experiences, 4 – 26 January, 2023. 

CFS and Galeries Lafayette Champs-Elysées will collaborate on piloting sustainable and circular IoT (Internet of Things) products, which will be available to explore and purchase both physically and digitally in the form of phygital NFTs via augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies. All purchases will be accessible using cryptocurrency with Currency Partner Crypto.com, the world’s fastest-growing platform of its kind. 

With the application of SPIN, customers can discover each product’s timeline, which is authentically traced on blockchain and connected via their exclusive IoT label printer. The technology prints unique QR-code labels that are sewn onto each garment at manufacturing level. Using any smartphone, customers can easily scan the code to visualize the item's journey, impact, and ownership via AR and VR (with Meta Quest headsets), and receive digital ownership upon purchase. 

A series of talks will be hosted IRL in the atrium of Galeries Lafayette Champs-Elysées, featuring a curated group of changemakers and creative pioneers in art, fashion, technology, and music, with the purpose of educating and creating awareness on the future possibilities in tech and the circular economy. Additionally, a program to meet the creators will be presented in VR, for all participants to speak with inventors behind the products. This unique experience will demonstrate a new industry standard for the future of retail, as it amplifies the augmented product experience for the next generation of sustainable products.

THE WEB3 HUB TO FASHION SCIENCE AND CULTURE

THE WEB3 HUB TO FASHION SCIENCE AND CULTURE

NEXT ARTICLES

How Do We Build a Circular Fashion System?

ENRIQUE MENENDEZ

FROM THE EDITOR
18 November

How Do We Build a Circular Fashion System?

In pursuit of equitable and sustainable systems in fashion, we establish a space for exploration that goes deeper than just theorizing Web3.

Over the past four years, CFS has established the leading virtual reality conference exploring the intersection of Web3 and culture. Executives, academia, and more have gathered to exchange thought leadership all in the name of creating circular business models across fashion, art, and design.

Now, we further cement our pursuit of this system, establishing CFS as Circular Fashion System – the Web3 hub to fashion science and culture. To inform our work, we define these familiar but growing terms as follows:

• Fashion: A creative reflection of the ethos of the time. A medium that is constantly changing. Diverse, innovative, and circular in Web3.

• Culture: Art, design, architecture. The physical and digital walls and landscapes that create a home for creative and science exploration.

• Science: A way of thinking to safeguard fashion’s survival and evolution in line with society. A method to produce creativity in harmony with the planet and humanity.

As the impact of Web3 on fashion grows, so does the breadth of our work. At CFS, we understand “system” as a model of active thinking and action that works toward circularity. The engine of our system is driven by community.

Community in fashion can be a funny thing. Notoriously, the cultural industries breed critics. It seems this nature is only amplified when fashion enters the metaverse. Rightfully so, as the Web3 space is relatively new. However, fear of failure stunts innovation. At CFS, we welcome the discourse. 

Criticism, in fact, is a primary product of the fashion system right now. Meanwhile, the industry is plagued by inequality, waste, and cultural dissonance. A growing group of believers are working against this. This is the community we invite to CFS – the rising class of thinkers that know fashion can be equitable, circular, and innovative. 

As a Web3 hub, CFS establishes a space for exploration that does not just talk about Web3 but is Web3. Our reporting, thought leadership, and content creation intersects with AR, VR and Web3 solutions.

The foundation for this exploration will be cemented at CFS Summit 2022, where leaders from Meta, Kering, Sotheby’s, and more will gather in virtual reality to embrace the intersection of fashion and technology. Following this year’s theme, Render the Phygital Reality, we will tackle what it means to be human in a world where the physical and digital are becoming evermore intertwined. We will engage in discourse on how this new reality can align with Web3 technology to achieve circularity in fashion.

At CFS, we commit to make space for everyone – the leaders, explorers, thinkers, and learners. As the world of Web3 fashion is new and rapidly evolving , the contributions of the individual and the intersection of varying expertise and interests is vital to our expansion.

If you are an NFT collector, explore the new range of digital twins that live in SPIN, our phygital NFT metaverse. If you’re an industry executive, consider the value of embedding transparency at every stage of your supply chain with blockchain traceability. If you don’t know what any of this means, we’re here to answer questions. If you have queries we can’t answer – we will learn together. And if you have criticisms of Web3 or fashion at large, we trust that this will further innovation.

Welcome to the new CFS.

Enrique Menendez, Editor in Chief

THE WEB3 HUB TO FASHION SCIENCE AND CULTURE

THE WEB3 HUB TO FASHION SCIENCE AND CULTURE

NEXT ARTICLES