As we build towards Web3, legacy fashion needs to pivot fast, making itself accessible to brands, designers, and of course, the everyday consumer. True Hollywood Talk sat down with Josh Webb, CEO and founder of ARCENTI, who has a unique perspective on why fashion houses today need to shift towards a community-driven approach, or risk losing relevance.
Webb strongly believes that community and technology will improve how legacy fashion houses exist and operate soon.
“Things are not progressive in legacy fashion, because most creatives are bound by hierarchical confines; so we see a lack of growth in creativity, innovation change,” Webb told True Hollywood Talk.
In one of his recent interviews, he also pointed out that “fashion houses with the community at the core will become unicorns and produce outsized results.”
However, there is no obstruction for creativity with community-driven fashion houses.
“Everyone is a contributor and involved in every step of the creative process from concept development, art inspiration, color story development, fabric selection, marketing, positioning strategy, and distribution strategy. Everything is publicly documented, and involvement by token holders is encouraged,” explains Webb.
How would a community-driven fashion brand work?
Launched by Webb and his fiancé, Angelina Lee, ARCENTI is a pioneer Web3 fashion brand on a mission to improve the creative fashion process through emerging technologies. According to its website, the community hub will be a place online where everyone can come together to work on projects.
“We will set up a voting mechanism so that collectively, we can decide on what ideas to push forward with,” he told True Hollywood Talk. “For example, vote on a theme for the collection (are we doing seasonal, seasonless, men/women/genderless/all). These themes will be put forward by the community, not just us! There will be token gated channels, for holders, where the work and voting will be done. Once each milestone has been completed, we move on to the next. Going forward with each milestone until the products are shipped out to consumers.”
During the interview, Webb laid out three key areas where ARCENTI is focused on decentralizing the creative processes used in fashion houses:
1. Production
Employing the voting model coupled with using 3D modeling software like CLO3D to cut down on waste, samples, and production lead times can bring sampling down to less than two (2) samples.
This 3D modeling software can produce lifelike 3D-renders that get extremely close to what a product would look like in real life.
According to Webb, this process cuts down decision-making time and speeds up the release of a collection that people are anxiously waiting to buy.
2. Diversity
Blockchain technology is predicated upon the idea of creating and maintaining a diverse, inclusive ecosystem – where pseudo-anonymity is widely accepted as we build towards Web3.
“Diversity to us includes but is not limited to race, gender, sexuality, location, culture, and age. Using new technology, especially that which is native to Web3, helps bring us together. People can be in the most remote part of the world and still have a very important role to play in a global brand,” he continued.
3. Consumer Experience
Another way to improve consumer experience is by token-gating products so that loyal consumers are not restricted by time, location, and current funds.
Technology brings the consumer closer to a brand, if the proper levels of interactivity are in place. They can directly interact with one another through platforms such as Discord, while having the ability to voice their opinions, provide crucial feedback, and of course, play an active role in the community.
Speaking to accessibility, some consumers are frustrated with certain products only being available at certain locations around the globe. Thankfully, ecommerce has helped this issue, but still paves the way for bots to be able to clean out primary markets and relisting it on the secondary market for a significantly higher markup.
Bottom Line
Ultimately, ARCENTI wants to flip legacy fashion on its head, and make it more accessible to today’s generations. By building from the ground-up with a “community-first” mindset, the fashion sector can transform itself into a non-geographical, inclusive, and merit-based infrastructure that is provably fair and reflects the true achievements of what Web3 promises.
