Franca Sozzani's iconic archive goes Phygital NFT and you can own it

In addition to being an actual fashion iconoclast for her controversial editorial ideas, Franca Sozzani, was also something of a mod rebel in terms of her dressing sense and she did definitely more than just tinker with good looks. A creative leader like none other, in her three decades as managing editor at Vogue Italia, Franca Sozzani has been unafraid to name global, sometimes controversial topics that other publications often shy away from, she really made a difference with fashion, via showcasing issues and topics that are cultural, social, even economic, through the lens of visual creativity and witty written content.

Franca Sozzani still inspires on so many levels to believe in breaking barriers and even years after her death, she is still deeply missed and her impact lives on.

Now, some years have passed and the fashion industry aims to transition into the web3 digitally-driven, circular economy by connecting innovators in fields like sustainable development, design, and technology.

In such scenario SPIN by lablaco, Fondazione Sozzani, and NABA, the Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, have found like minded partners in each other to activate the future of circular fashion in web3. Together, they are releasing a phygital NFT collection of former Vogue Italia Editor-in-Chief Franca Sozzani’s personal couture archive. The phygital element enables shoppers to purchase Franca Sozzani’s garments in person but also as digital twins on SPIN, lablaco’s phygital NFT metaverse for fashion, art, and culture.

Through digital ownership with tracking, lablaco is enabling the adoption of a new, circular business model, providing transparency and tracking for consumers of second-hand products. lablaco uses decentralized blockchain on the lablaco Circular Fashion Platform, enabling consumers to record via digital labels (QR codes) the digital ownership of their clothing. To ensure sustainability in this system, Lablaco believes the future is circular retail. 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.

While NFTs may sound confusing, they are actually simply a way of holding digital assets, decentralized and not fungible. SPIN’s circular business model gives back a 10% royalty fee in perpetuity to the original NFT creator every time it is traded on the secondary market. In this case, that revenue will continuously further cancer research progress through The Franca Sozzani Fund.

The Franca Sozzani Fund for Preventive Genomics was established by Francesco Carrozzini in his mother’s honor in 2018 at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Central to their research is the commitment to social justice and ensuring that the future of medicine is an equitable one, so that everyone, regardless of ethnicity or socioeconomic background, may discover personalized strategies to promote health.

Franca Sozzani had a very personal style, beyond fashion. Sharing her ethos will inspire consumers to think about the impact of their clothes on the environment and encourage them to support sustainability and participate in the web3 circular economy. On sale are Sozzani’s looks designed by Azzedine Alaïa, Prada, Gucci, Valentino; shoes by Manolo Blahnik; and accessories by Fendi, Louis Vuitton, and more.

Working with the students of NABA Master of Arts in Fashion Design, 25 physical luxury garments have been digitized into 3D models, minted on the blockchain, and authenticated as phygital NFTs. Each garment connects to IoT labels verified on SPIN and created by SPIN’s NFT label printer.

The NFT smart labels on each product can be scanned with smart phones, which transport consumers to a portal for the phygital NFT. There you can have the option to purchase the limited-edition digital NFT twins of the full phygital item — which includes the physical garment and its digital twin.

Cutting-edge simulation technologies have been used to create virtual, true-to life digital twins of the most iconic fashion looks of the Fondazione Sozzani’s archive. Even the most complex patterns have been drafted in the software, draped and edited on the avatar. “For NABA students, it has been a great opportunity. This project propels us into a dimension where we raise awareness of our heritage and skills in making. It is definitely a new approach in dealing with the idea of the archive as a tool for innovation,” says Colomba Leddi, NABA Fashion Design Area Leader.

Color and material properties were added. Patterns were draped directly on the avatar and the print design positioned on the panels. This project has been important to investigate a new way to incorporate virtual development of fashion into the fashion product life cycle. Each phygital NFT purchase will grant access to the garment’s provenance and ownership timeline, including memories, in the form of photographs depicting iconic moments of Franca Sozzani wearing them.

“The concept of transforming celebrity vintage into Phygital NFTs is really cool,” explains SPIN co-founder Lorenzo Albrighi, “because you get to see and honor the timeline of the product. And with purchase you will receive digital ownership on the blockchain’s smart contract and be able to wear this unique Chanel piece from the ’80s, not just physically, but also digitally, on your avatar.”

“Thanks to this amazing partnership with Fondazione Sozzani and NABA, we can finally have people experience in person what a 'digitized circular fashion' really means and how it works, showcasing the full potential of applications in implementing new business models and product storytelling through Web3 circular retail technology – SPIN,” adds Eliana Kuo, Co-CEO and Founder of lablaco & SPIN.

Once again, conversations about the fashion and web3 metaverse are being pushed to the forefront. Web3 is poised to become the next big thing in fashion, while the metaverse is just going to continue expanding. Every month, there is an increasing number of fashion brands beginning to venture into the web3 world, and the NFTs and metaverse are driving their sales growth and strategies.

The future is getting undeniably phygital as we are metadiving into fashion weeks worldwide, despite everything.

AI-Generated text edited by Gloria Maria Cappelletti, editor in chief, RED-EYE

All artworks courtesy of Fondazione Sozzani, SPIN by lablaco and NABA

RADAR by RED-EYE is the first disclosed AI co-generated newsletter, that explores everything we need to know about the future.

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