Do you know what is coming for the future of fashion? Have you heard the term ‘metaverse’, bought an NFT, or created a username to join a Discord community? Regardless of your answer, we present to you, ALTERRAGE, the first DAO-led fashion label.

URL Disruption for IRL Transformation

We seek to pioneer the limitless creation of personal identity through physical (IRL), phygital (ORL), and digital (URL) environments by removing barriers separating the physical and digital worlds.
ALTERRAGE optimises the formats of digital and physical products according to the three layers of our existing and future realities.

- Lauren Kacher / KALAU, Creative Director & Founder of Alterrage

This quote stems from the creative mind of Lauren Kacher, an American fashion designer based in Paris, who also goes by the online persona of KALAU (a mix of her surname and first name, along with inspiration from the famous painter, Frida Kahlo.) KALAU has over 10 years of fashion industry experience, from pattern making, sample construction and luxury design which has taken her across New York, London and Paris.

With this mix of skill and experience, we asked which she was more comfortable with - the physical or digital. Her initial reply was both, even though she believes digital tools can reduce the impact of the fashion industry.

The physical process of clothing production creates a major disadvantage - immense amounts of waste. Currently the digital integration of tools such as CLO 3D and Blender are relatively new to the design process and are not being fully utilised to their maximum potential within current systems. Lauren explains that digital tools can greatly improve the design and production processes for more effective visualisation, waste reduction, and foster pre-order sales models to ensure no products are physically created before a demand.

The word, ‘phygital’ describes the merge of the physical and digital, while Alterrage takes it one step further. Now presenting, METARALITY™ and the future of interoperable identity.

What is METARALITY, according to Alterrage?

METARALITY™ is the optimisation of a product format according to its most beneficial social and environmental impact across physical, augmented, and digital worlds.
The LTL : ‘Larger Than Life' Collection
What would you wear without the constraints of gravity, physics, or species?
The ‘Larger than Life’ collection allows access to the limitless exploration of virtual identity, with pixel-made avatar wearables portable into the metaverse of your choosing.
The ORL : ‘On Real Life' Collection
‘Digital embroidery to adorn your physical reality'
The ‘On Real Life’ collection digitally enhances the physical identity with Augmented Reality fashion filters. At Alterrage we believe this layer of reality holds a high level of promise as a realistic use case of digital fashion to the public.
The IRL : ‘In Real Life' Collection
‘Close the Loop, Make only on Demand'
At Alterrage, we don’t believe that digital fashion will replace the physical industry. We believe we can use digital to make the physical industry better.
METARALITY™ : LTL = ORL + IRL

The tools of the trade at Alterrage’s disposal include Photoshop, Figma, and Procreate and for the initial brainstorming. Lauren mentions the main tools for digital fashion - CLO 3D and Marvelous Designer which are used for patterns and drape-based simulations. Blender is used for more rigid accessories, objects, and rendering.

Lauren began working in 3D in 2015 as a pattern maker to improve sample efficiency for factory production. With a close knit team at Alterrage, Stella Achenbach and fellow members of the ALTER[tech] department implement completed 3D assets into AR software using lens, though they are moving to game engine software for future collections.

The Crystalline Circuit Pendant Earrings by *Alterrage*

Enter the metaverse

NFTs - the infamous internet buzzword. We wanted to know Lauren’s thoughts on it all and she broke it down to us very well. The concept of NFTs are not a scam, they’re digital assets, a transparent way of ownership over something digital and transparent. The benefits of NFTs involve valuing products - ownership of digital assets, similar to skins for avatars (like the Convergence in Fortnite) in the gaming industry. NFTs are transparent to the blockchain which in turn helps the community (more on how you can become a part of it later with Alterrage).

The NFT scam you may have heard of is called a “rug pull”, when upon purchasing an NFT from a project, the project leaders vanish along with your money. Lauren’s advice, ‘do your research’ about NFTs and the community along with ‘everything can be a scam’. Very useful indeed.

The Devil wears…

Alterrage was ultimately created from Lauren’s reaction to two fundamental problems within the fashion industry - sustainability and top-down hierarchy.

Having worked at Saint Laurent, Loewe and other major luxury brands in Paris, Lauren understands the difficulty of ‘breaking into the industry' and the lack of credit most designers receive while working inside these organisations. Communication is often top down, with the CEO of the organisation having few common values or objectives to those in ‘lower’ positions, such as the intern of the studio.

A potential alternative for the future sees the use of a DAO structure (decentralized autonomous organization). The idea and concept rebalances the hierarchical structure found within most businesses, with the aim to be controlled and owned by the contributing organisation members.

Alterrage is now pioneering the first DAO-led fashion label. Striving to build a community around collective contribution organized into an ecosystem of skill-focused ‘spheres’, allowing anyone to enter and start building in web 3.0 fashion around a shared vision.

Being well travelled, we asked Lauren, which place has been the most influential in moulding her vision for Alterrage. Paris had taught her many valuable lessons about the inner workings of the luxury fashion industry, a dream she had since the age of 15. Through an unfortunate job loss during the pandemic, Lauren realised that the luxury industry was not the right fit for her, and began the empowering spark to start Alterrage ✈🌍

Future fashion

There are many ideas, beliefs and values for Alterrage. These include the possibility of reselling and earning royalties of it in web 3.0, along with tokens you would earn allowing you to ‘vote’ on future ideas, adding a factor of a ‘virtual democracy’. Lauren plans to pioneer, reward and list everyone who contributes to Alterrage’s creations. Her encounters previously in the fashion industry ensures everyone at Alterrage works well as a team. The standard and future of the internet?

Each collection at Alterrage begins with a cause - the first season (started in September 2021) focused on the concept of e-waste to bring attention to the issue through non-profit partnership, factual research, and a profit share from the proceeds of NFT sales.

We wanted to get a description of Alterrage’s style, straight from the creator’s mouth - Eco-anarchy, hippy punks, edgy, unisex and David Bowie glam rock (along with working with musicians) 🤘🤘 The Alterrage logo is a mix of an épée sword - a French sword where Lauren further explains it represents ‘anarchy, aggression, empowerment’ ⚔ While the ‘eye’ of the épée logo signifies a reference to the QR code. Cool ideas 😎

The future

With an exhibition in London from March to April 2022, Alterrage’s brand and reach is growing. We do appreciate Lauren/KALAU for taking the time out of her busy schedule to answer our questions and provide feedback and comments on this post (we may eventually release the full, detailed voice note). Keep an eye out for all the good stuff and stay in the know on Linktree, Discord, Twitter, LinkedIn YouTube, Facebook and Instagram for constant content, chat and creativity. We also hope we’ve educated and prepared you for the future and possibly learnt some new terms and ideas about the metaverse thanks to IndieBloom! 🤓