Amsterdam-based digital fashion company The Fabricant has raised $14 million in a Series A funding round.
The round was led by investor Greenfield One, with participation from Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary’s Sound Ventures, Red DAO and others, according to a VentureBeat article shared by The Fabricant.
The funding will be used to support and expand Dutch company The Fabricant Studio’s co-creation and non-fungible token (NFT) platform.
“This is a huge moment for the digital fashion revolution,” the company said in a LinkedIn post on Thursday.
Founded in 2018, The Fabricant uses visual film effects such as motion capture, 3D animation software and body scanning to create hyper-realistic animations of garments.
The company has placed itself at the forefront of the emerging digital fashion market in recent years, collaborating with fashion heavyweights such as Tommy Hilfiger, Puma, Adidas and Off-White.
Metaverse is gaining momentum
“In 2018, we set out to realize our vision of an all-digital fashion industry that wastes nothing but data and exploits nothing but imagination,” The Fabricant said Thursday.
“This is a monumental step towards that goal and a new collaborative and decentralized fashion ecosystem,” it said.
There are a multitude of practical uses for digital clothing, from streamlining and sustainability of the design process to creating virtual fashion shows and trade shows – something that has become particularly relevant during the pandemic.
The Fabricant envisions a world in the not-too-distant future where people will buy and rent digital clothing to be fashioned from avatars of themselves (or “digital twins”) within the fast-growing – albeit still nascent and speculative – metaverse to wear.
In 2019, The Fabricant sold its first digital couture dress, called Iridescence, at an auction in New York for $9,500.
This translated article originally appeared on FashionUnited.uk.