Artist’s spotlight HONEY fashion house

HONEY is a young innovative fashion house that creates outstanding 3D clothes and avatars. What makes them different from other brands is HONEY’S founder Svetlana Yakunina —an inspiring female entrepreneur who aims to empower women through her brand.

Svetlana shares with RED-EYE’s readers her experience in the advanced industry and sheds light on how women are faring there:

Svetlana, how did you get started in digital fashion?

My journey started years ago when I was playing The Sims 2 on my very old laptop! I remember wondering why the number of fashionable items was so little. I was thinking how cool it would be to have real-life items on the avatars, and this is what we now call “phygital” fashion. The story of my discovery of digital fashion as it is now is about 2 years old. The first time I’ve ever heard about it was due to NFTs in games, which caught my attention. Actually, at that time, HONEY was a magazine, which I will be describing more precisely later, and we began focusing on digital fashion but mostly in games. Then the industry started to grow exponentially! I fell in love with DressX ideas, and then The Fabricant. I would say they build the fundamentals in my head and my vision of virtual clothing. I will remain forever grateful for their includible amount of work, as pioneers in this field.

What is the story behind HONEY and your mission?

HONEY was created with a mission to contribute to sustainability in some way. Even if, in the first place, we were a thrifting store with a blog about sustainable fashion, we always looked into innovation and technology in fashion. Then we moved to a magazine and discovered the world of digital fashion. Our values slightly changed with the higher focus on our community, however, we are still bringing sustainable solutions to the fashion industry.

What is your biggest challenge as a founder of a digital fashion company?

There are many opportunities that new technology brings to any industry. Virtual fashion began challenging traditional concepts a long ago but the market developed just recently providing more use cases for fashion brands. Marvelous Designer, one of the first 3D fashion software, was founded in early 2011, but still, it took time for fashion to adopt it. Nowadays there is more and more software appearing every day... It takes time to learn a new program, it takes time to master it, and it takes time to educate others about it. I think we all are facing similar issues right now with metaverse and digital fashion in particular – there are too many platforms. I, as an entrepreneur, as well as many other leaders, should understand how to address this challenge and make the experience of our artists smoother across all software and tools.

What are the main challenges you face as a female entrepreneur?

I am glad you raised this question. The more I work in Web3 space, the more I notice how this industry is dedicated towards challenging the traditional world and setting up new standards. The number of females contributing to this space is enormous, but I do also see males who are pushing gender diversity to new horizons.

What do you seek to add to the world through your work?

As you might already understand, my lifetime dream is to contribute to the shift from unsustainable, unfair and unethical traditional fashion to a more safe, fair and sustainable business. And I found my own path in doing so through digital fashion, through the brand I am building together with my community and through the values we share as our mission.

What are your thoughts about the role of AI in fashion?

Well, this is a very interesting question because recently I have been experimenting with AI fashion a lot. At first, surely, AI can facilitate all the creative processes within the fashion industry where you need to create a mood board to represent a collection, brainstorm environments for virtual showrooms or even build a new character from scratch. Then, of course, you can use it as a tool to help in the creation of variations of your garments, such as a photo or video enhancer, background remover, object tracker and much more. There are so many different software nowadays.

Opening the curtains, AI technology is already present in daily activities in our brand we tend to use it mostly as a tool for creating mood boards for several collections. It saves lots of time if it is navigated correctly and I would highly recommend you to try it out.

What are your plans for the next year?

We are looking towards creating a more collaborative environment with our community. I strongly believe that everyone is an artist in its own field, no matter what you are doing. Being an entrepreneur is a type of business art, being a speaker is also an art of communication. At HONEY, we are always trying to find that spark, that glimpse which drives inspiration and enhances creativity.

What is the biggest lesson you have learned during your time as an entrepreneur?

Community is everything. You can be the greatest artist, the genius of all times but without a team you cannot build something. In Web3 space your employees are not anymore employees, they are part of your brand, they are driven by the same mission. They value your company because you resonate with their hearts.

What is your definition of success?

I believe success is defined by the number of lives you changed, by the value you can leave to this world, and by the issues you could solve.

What would be your favorite outfit in Metaverse?

I work with so many incredible souls and greatest artists, I cannot choose only one outfit! However, if we are speaking about virtual identity in general, I would love to bring the avatar of my dog to the metaverse with me!

@honeyloveclub

interview @zarina_izy

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