We are kicking off the first week of the Weekly Designer Spotlight with ENKI Digital Fashion!
ENKI is a phygital fashion designer who is experimenting with all aspects of web3 fashion, from purely digital, to physical counterparts, to glistening AR filters, to cross-realm fractional garment mints and so much more!
Treasury Web3 Fashion Vault Purchases
Under the designer spotlight, both the DIGITALAX + GDN Treasuries have purchased one each of ENKI’s live pieces from the DIGITALAX web3 fashion marketplace which will be held in the treasury vaults.
DIGITALAX Vault Purchase
Item: Everything Was Red
GDN Vault Purchase
Item: Abyssal Jumpsuit
Autobiographical Entry from ENKI
My background is in the traditional fashion industry in fashion design & manufacture and fashion branding and merchandising. I was a style advisor for a while, but I had always been more interested in crafting and making things, so I started making and selling wire wrapped crystal jewelry on the side and knew I wanted a career where I would have a lot of creative freedom.
I first found out about digital fashion around 2 years ago when I read that The Fabricant sold the first digital garment on auction for $9000. The industry was so fresh, I knew then that I needed to know more. I went on their website and looked at the job opportunities they had listed and found the softwares I had to learn, and from there I learned Clo3D.
I started to develop digital fashion assets for brands and designers, each with their own reason and use case for the technology. Some wanted it mainly for promotional reasons; others wanted to test out garments before physically making them. But I knew that more could be done with the 3D models I was making and with the digital fashion industry as a whole. It was at that point that I was introduced to the GDN. I truly have found my tribe here. Even though we are all separated by distance and screens, we are connected in a way that transcends those limitations. We're building out not only an entirely new industry, but a new way of connecting, collaborating and doing business with each other; a way that's cemented in supporting one another rather than competing. Competition is still there, but in more of a collaborative and open way that allows anyone to compete, regardless of background. Equal opportunities for everyone.
I see digital fashion being the norm in the future and I'm extremely grateful to be helping to pioneer the industry in that direction in a more decentralised way through web3 fashion and NFT's. I have plans to grow into a business that can encapsulate all areas of digital/web3 fashion, to help traditional fashion brands transition more easily into the space, with the right advice and guidance. I also have plans to incorporate physical design, e.g. the jewelry I make into web3fashion, so that if you buy the NFT you get a one-off physical piece and also use cases within the metaverse and DeFi staking your digital version NFT on DIGITALAX for $MONA yield. I understand the value NFT technology could have in the future. That's what makes me so passionate about this side of the industry. In the end, I want all of my NFT holders to benefit from my success. Ideally I would like them to be the ones that fund my plans and ideas by buying my NFT's, rather than a centralised bank or organisation.
Web3 Renaissance Patronage
Any patronage of the Weekly Designer Spotlight goes directly to the Global Designer Network Treasury, Spotlighted Designer and Core Writer (50/35/15), for further growing out the infrastructure, community and market of web3 fashion, the open metaverse and more. For this week, the core writer was GDN member Emma-Jane MacKinnon-Lee.