Through a collaboration with French digital startup Stage 11, Paris Fashion Week is advancing its support for the metaverse and Web 3.0, the internet’s next generation.
Launchmetrics, a software and data analytics business, has been working with Paris Fashion Week to create and enhance its digital platform. Pascal Morand is the executive president of Paris Fashion Week’s Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode (FHCM). Accordingly, Morand said integrating the metaverse is reasonable. “Our collaboration with Stage 11 is a major step forward in the virtualization process.”
Thanks to a collaboration between the FHCM and Stage 11. The metaverse components will integrate into the Paris Fashion Week digital platform in late 2022/early 2023. Stage 11 will begin by collaborating with Sphere, the federation’s showroom for rising designers, according to Morand.
Metaverse Takes Over
The metaverse has dominated other cities’ fashion weeks. Jonathan Simkhai and Maisie Wilen presented digital versions of their collections in New York. Roksanda made an NFT based on one of his collection dresses. Also, Altuzarra and Eckhaus Latta also created NFTs based on their shows. Designers such as Paco Rabanne, Dolce & Gabbana, and Etro will take part in the first Metaverse Fashion Week. The metaverse platform Decentraland sponsors it, at the end of fashion month.
Meanwhile, this season’s Paris Fashion Week began with a digital show. MA alumni of the Institut Français de la Mode spearheaded the show. Students in accessory design demonstrated their inventions in a video using metaverse experiences made possible by Stage 11. Stage 11 co-founder and CEO Jonathan Belolo explains they tutored the students to help them build pure digital masterpieces. They also scanned their physical products to incorporate them in the virtual realm.”
What Prompted Web 3.0?
The Web 3.0’s endless possibilities energize this generation’s students. Which made the classroom feel like a jungle or a dystopian universe. Xavier Romatet, dean of the Institut Français de la Mode, calls the students of the school “the future actors in the industry.”
Jonathan Belolo, Jean-Philippe Braud, Gregory Dhonner, and Mani Nordine created Stage 11 in early 2021. Moreover, they have the goal of “putting cultural experiences, branding, and digital retail into a virtual environment.”
The company plans to establish its own metaverse platform in 2022. Moreover, this will distinguish it from other metaverses by its music focus and very high-resolution and ultra-realistic aesthetics, according to the company. Belolo explains that the idea is not to replace conventional physical shows. Additionally, it’s to supplement them, to place the audience front and center as active participants rather than passive viewers.”
Other investors
One of the co-founders of Scorpio Music, an independent French record label, Belolo is a music business veteran and a veteran of the music industry (his late father Henri Belolo formed and produced the disco hitmakers). Together with his co-founders Braud and Dhonner (CEO) and Nordine (President of American Artists Company), Braud and Dhonner co-founded Profirst, a high-end event production company.
Otium Capital, a European venture capital firm, led a seed round that garnered €6 million for Stage 11. Indeed, Alexandre Mattiussi, founder of Ami, and Nicolas Santi-Weil, CEO of Ami, are among the angel investors. Following that will be a Series A round. Stage 11 is part of a burgeoning Web 3.0 ecosystem in Paris. It specifically includes companies such as Powder, Lynx, and Arianee.
