We're Going to Court

Greetings digital fashion friends,

In ten days I'll be leaving New York for an indefinite period of time to travel abroad while working from the road.

I don't have much planned yet but I'll be in Prague until Feb 5th and then Tel Aviv until early March.

Where else should I go? Who should I meet? Reply to this email and let me know.

If any of you are in the area, I'd love to meet for a coffee or a beer.

With half the month to go, we're at 84 subscribers. As mentioned last week, I'd love to get to 100 by the end of the month.

If you're new here, you can join in by clicking the purple button below.

🛍️MetaBirkins Move to Trial

Hermes is officially going to trial against MetaBirkin NFT creator Mason Rothschild for using the Birkin Bag name and likeness. With only two weeks until the court date, here's what we know:

• According to Vogue Business, Hermes argues that although Rothschild's digital designs don't function as bags, they are likely to confuse customers and are an example of fake Hermes products in the metaverse.

• Rothschild claims the pieces are artwork and are protected by the First Amendment

If you were wondering why so many brands (even those without any current Web3 presence) are registering trademarks and IP protection on virtual goods, this might have something to do with it.

💄L'Oreal enters the Digital Village

Shortly after launching its first experiment with Ready Player Me, L'oreal is venturing further into the metaverse. Last week the beauty giant announced that its internal venture capital fund, Business Opportunities for L'Oreal Development (BOLD), acquired a minority investment in the metaverse-as-a-service platform, Digital Village.

Digital Village will use the money from its $4 million seed round to expand the platform's capabilities, "adding new tools to power 3D world development, advanced avatar customization, and virtual store creation."

👚The Future of Shopping?

Masterminded by Ian Curtis, this WebAR experiment uses real-time reflections, baked cloth simulations, and Dalle-2-powered generated image textures. Ignore the butchered image quality (still can't watch videos in emails!) and watch the full video here. 

📣Calling all digital fashion designers📣

Fresh off its launch of the INTERLOPER, the global multidisciplinary creative studio, The Immersive Kind is hosting an OPEN CALL for "FUTURE FASHION." The collection aims to amplify the next generation of digital fashion designers by bringing more inclusion and diversity to the industry, and exploring new ways of thinking about how we can consume and experience the future of fashion.

The Immersive Kind Maison are inviting submissions from digital fashion designers, artists, and collectors to share their work with the world.

Submit your entry by Jan 31st to info [at] theimmersivekind [dot] com.

👾 Pixels and Threads:

• Maison Valentino's new essentials line was shot entirely by AI

• A frighteningly life-like avatar created by Pantheon Lab

• Blvck Paris and Fortnite link up for a phygital clothing and lifestyle collection

• This new model by Microsoft can generate speech in any voice after only hearing three samples of that voice

That's all he wrote. If you liked this issue, do me a solid and pass it along to a friend

Thanks for reading,

Randy