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Image credits: The Fabricant

Amsterdam-based The Fabricant, a decentralised digital fashion house building the wardrobe of the metaverse, announced that it has secured $14M (€12.8M) in Series A round of funding led by Greenfield One. Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary’s Sound Ventures, Red DAO and others also participated in the round. 

Existing investors, including 4impact, Slingshot Ventures and Borski Fund, also participated. 

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Other contributors to the Series A round include pioneers in the crypto community such as Sfermion, Koji Capital, Stefano Rosso (OTB Group), Marc Weinstein (Partner at Mechanism Capital), Trevor McFedries (Brud), Shari Glazer (Glazer Foundation), Angel Xu (Venture Partner Quantstamp), Benny Giang (ex-Dapper Labs), Richard Ma (Quantstamp and owner of Iridescence Dress), Sebastian Borget (Sandbox), Sillytuna (Crypto Investor), Chad Knight (Head of 3D Wilder World), Victoire Maureau and Anoop Kansupada (Nifty Gateway).

Fund utilisation

The Amsterdam-based fashion platform says that it will use the funds to further develop its initiative, the “wardrobe of the metaverse”, through its NFT platform – The Fabricant Studio.

The Fabricant says the financing will also allow them to contribute to a new economy and provide a platform where anyone can become a digital fashion creator and participate in the digital fashion economy. 

The Metaverse is coming and everyone is sprinting to secure their slice of the virtual pie. The Fabricant is one among them. 

Digitalising democracy

Founded by Kerry Murphy, Amber Slooten and Adriana Hoppenbrouwer in 2018, The Fabricant creates digital couture NFT collectibles in collaboration with fashion and entertainment brands to bring them into the 3D digital fashion space.

The company says that it has created a space where a savvy 12-year old can create a metaverse-native brand that can compete on the same terms as a heritage fashion label. 

“A kid in Dakar will stand as much chance as a kid in Paris of becoming an influential fashion force,” says the company in its manifesto.

Amber Slooten, co-founder and Creative Director at The Fabricant, says, “The story behind digital fashion needs a new narrative. One that leaves toxic behaviours and waste behind and looks into the 21st century and beyond. In the Metaverse we get to create a new playing field where everyone can benefit and enjoy the love for self expression, and create an economy around it. We’ve designed the tools to help construct a new fashion industry, one in which we believe we will all thrive.”

The Fabricant estimates that by 2025, 100M people will be metaverse-ready by wearing digital garments which are minted in their studio.

To date, the company has partnered with Adidas, Under Armour, Off-White, Napapijri, Puma, Peak Performance, World of Women, and gaming platforms like Epic Games and The Sandbox. 

Investor

Based out of Berlin, Greenfield One is an early-stage crypto and blockchain venture capital firm. The VC focus on early developer teams building towards an open, decentralised and more robust architecture of tomorrow’s web.

Jascha Samadi, Partner of Greenfield One, says, “Within virtual environments we are likely going to have multiple digital reflections of our physical self. The Fabricant Studio allows any creator to become their own fashion designer in the metaverse – paired with Web3 technology, digital fashion becomes unique, tradeable and accessible for the masses. The team behind The Fabricant identified this paradigm of user-generated fashion very early on, long before NFTs caught mainstream attention.”

“Everyday users become creators using The Fabricant Studio, which allows users to craft high-end digital fashion NFTs in collaboration with their favourite brands. The Fabricant is building a very user-friendly end-to-end experience that obfuscates the complexities of blockchains, while still giving users all of the sovereignty + interoperability + distribution value that NFTs can offer. By being the first to tackle UGC on the blockchain, The Fabricant is introducing entire new ecosystems to this community and showing them the power and value of NFTs for creators,” says Maaria Bajwa, Investor at Sound Ventures.