What’s next in fashion tech: Digital passports and mixed reality

This article on fashion tech is part of our Vogue Business membership package. To enjoy unlimited access to our weekly Technology Edit, which contains Member-only reporting and analysis and our NFT Tracker, sign up for membership here. The direction of travel for fashion’s future includes physical clothing with built-in “operating systems” and mixed reality that adds digital enhancements to the world around us. That’s according to the founders of two of the leading fashion-tech companies, Eon and DressX, who are helping executives navigate the new stage of the internet. Vogue Business invited Natasha Franck, founder and CEO of Eon, and Natalia Modenova and Daria Shapovalova, co-founders of DressX, to join the Vogue Business Executive Summit for two intimate conversations about their work and the future of the industry with Vogue Business senior innovation editor Maghan McDowell at Condé Nast’s New York headquarters. Eon: The road to digital identification Eon provides digital identities to physical goods, creating a “digital twin through data”, meaning Eon manages a unique digital ID for each item that stores and organises the data associated with that product. The IDs can be attached via technologies including a QR code or NFC chip, and can incorporate additional data or features once the identity is established. Brand and retail partners include Gabriela Hearst, Chloé, Coach, Net-a-Porter, Target and Vestiaire Collective. In 2021, Franck and Eon partnered with the Prince of Wales (now King Charles) to receive a commitment from the CEOs of brands including Burberry, Stella McCartney and Brunello Cucinelli to introduce digital IDs across all products by 2025. There’s more to come: the European Union will announce standards for digital product passports in 2025, with 18 months for brands to implement them. Franck describes Eon as “an operating system for products, in which physical products will be able to speak to us and will be connected to the internet”. Brands use it to store data about the construction, materials and provenance of products, and record when a product has been repaired; customers can use it to authenticate products, learn about the product’s backstory, receive promotional offers and use the ID to instantly list a product on a resale site — which can also ultimately drive resale revenue for the brand. Finally, recyclers can use it to understand the materials. Eventually, she anticipates that the concept will become as ubiquitous as a standard bar code or food label and customers will have the expectation that products come with these capabilities installed. Franck says the industry is at a “tipping point”. “We view the digital ID as the single biggest catalyst for a sustainable fashion industry, and we are seeing lots of brands move to implementation; those that moved first are able to capitalise on commerce enablement and customer experience.” DressX: Digital fashion for all DressX creates digital twins of a different kind. Modenova and Shapovalova formerly worked in the traditional fashion industry, but they have since founded DressX, which focuses on digital fashion. DressX’s capabilities include digitising physical fashion designs for brands, creating original digital creations, selling digital fashion via a marketplace and app, and dressing customer images in digital fashion via tailoring on still images or augmented reality via the DressX app, plus a new ‘DressX camera’ for video calls. While they can make and sell digital fashion as NFTs, most of their work is not blockchain-based. Its brand partners now include Dundas, Hugo Boss, Diesel and Drunk Elephant. It recently received an investment from Warner Music Group, and is working with the agency on digital merch for musical artists. In the past few years, the DressX team has been riding the waves of metaverse hype and has been uniquely privy to the conversations and concerns behind closed doors. Despite what some have referred to as a “metaverse winter”, Modenova says that the interest is still there among executives — but the public-facing announcements have quieted, and the buzzwords have been replaced by more practical, specific terms. She says that now that many brands have experimented with digital fashion technology, they have pivoted to longer-term projects that build on their learnings. A core theme in their work now is scaling adoption of digital fashion — and that doesn’t mean replacing traditional fashion, but rather adding a new product category. “Our main goal is to popularise digital fashion for as many people as possible. We don’t plan to conquer physical fashion — that is not the goal,” Shapovalova says. She also finds that focusing on the tech, including if a product is sold as an NFT, often seems to complicate the message. “Let’s stick to the simplicity and beauty of the product and give it to everyone.” The DressX founders see awareness being driven by a number of factors; these include the partnership to digitally dress Meta’s avatars and the opportunity to create digital concert merch. Hardware is also driving awareness of mixed reality; new augmented reality mirrors are accessible to anyone who simply stands in front of them, and the spate of eyewear launches from Apple and Meta further bring smart eyewear and mixed reality into the mainstream conversation. Modenova says that even though the smart glasses from Meta, made in collaboration with Ray-Ban, look more stylish, fashion executives are more excited by the more complex mixed reality headsets, and this is where the true fashion opportunity lies, she says. DressX has become almost a tech consultant for its partner brands, Shapovalova says. To that end, the company has developed a business-to-business tool, the ‘DressX Factory’, based on its own in-house tools, which helps brands create digital assets for multiple environments. “First, we started as a fashion-tech company and now we have become a tech-fashion company, because the tech became the most important pillar for all the solutions we are building internally,” she says. Finally, Modenova isn’t phased by fashion’s often sceptical tech attitude; rather, she identifies it as a key barometer of tech’s readiness. “Fashion is a test for mass adoption.” To receive the Vogue Business newsletter, sign up here. Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.

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