When Alice Delahunt launched SYKY earlier this year, she did so with the intention of empowering the fashion industry’s rising designers.
SYKY — pronounced “psy-che” — is a new Web3 platform designed to support creatives who are looking to sell both physical and digital renditions on their designs, as well as offering a space to trade products, share news, and chat.
After raising a $9 million Series A led by Alexis Ohanian, Delahunt is ready to let SYKY fly, and to accompany the launch is releasing an exclusive NFT: "The Keystone."
Holders of "The Keystone" will not only have access to SYKY’s members-only space, but also access to exclusive events, insights, and early designer drops.
Epitomizing its devotion to its creative community, SYKY is also setting aside 50 editions of the 987 NFTs on offer, especially for its aspiring designers.
Delahunt is no stranger to the industry, having been Chief Digital & Content Officer at Ralph Lauren and Social Media Director at Burberry. This experience, she hopes, will lend a hand to SYKY’s success, and also its ability to be a part of a larger renaissance she sees occurring between fashion and technology.
“At Burberry, there was a very small group of photographers that shot for the fashion industry, then suddenly the iPhone came along and anyone with connectivity could publish their work and gain a following based on merit,” Delahunt recalls.
“A creator economy emerged that disrupted traditional photography,” she adds. “Now, people on Instagram dominate the content industry. I believe the exact same thing is going to happen to luxury brands.”
Similar to the lifecycle Delahunt described of the iPhone and Instagram in Web2, Web3 is going through its early adopter-to-early majority phase.
Its early consumers paid absurd prices for NFTs simply for status, which is a part of the reason it makes sense for luxury brands to have led the market throughout 2021 and 2022.
For this cycle, Delahunt predicts a similar shift between the fashion industry’s rising designers and web3.
“When we look at the luxury houses today, there’s a relatively smallish number of them, right? 10 years from now, I think there'll be names that emerge [suddenly and] come to fruition [within a] year or two,” she says.
“We’ll discover the next Ralph Lauren or Coco Chanel, and SYKY democratizes access for that talent to rise based on merit.”
For its first round of designers, SYKY is focusing on digital fashion, which provides less risk for up-and-comers to test and iterate products without having to create samples.
According to a survey conducted by Roblox and Parsons School Of Design, 70 percent of Gen Z respondents who play Roblox get their physical style inspiration from their in-game avatar.
75 percent also said that they would buy digital fashion, with a quarter of participants stating they’d spent between $20 to $100 on a single digital product.
“The more people who have access to become the designer they dream of, the more talent designing, the more creative the world becomes,” Delahunt contends. “Whether that's the digital, physical, or augmented world, that's a net positive thing for humanity.”
