Weinsanto Is Diving Into the Metaverse With K-pop Band Lightsum
Victor Weinsanto may send his brand’s notoriety into the stratosphere with his latest project: A digital collection for South Korean girl group Lightsum that will drop as NFTs next month.
The French designer recently traveled to Los Angeles for K-Con, a three-day festival of South Korean culture, with Lightsum among the headline acts. Organizers said more than 90,000 people attended the convention and concerts.
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“I’ve never heard screams like that,” Weinsanto said, marveling at the size of the concert crowds and their enthusiasm. “You can really see K-pop fans are hysterical, in a good way.”
Weinsanto also highlighted the popularity of K-pop music in France, noting that print magazine K-World! — devoted to Korean pop culture — sells about 45,000 copies a month.
Having honed his skills at the elbow of couturier Jean Paul Gaultier, Weinsanto said it was a new adventure to conjure metaverse-ready fashions that aren’t limited by fabric capabilities, weight and gravity.
However, he opted to design looks for the band members that reflected their personal style, while nudging them out of their comfort zones with his cabaret-inspired designs. “I wanted to create something they could see themselves wearing in real life.”
Lightsum is composed of eight members from ages 15 to 19: Sangah, Chowon, Nayoung, Hina, Juhyeon, Yujeong, Huiyeon and Jian.
Formed by Cube Entertainment, Lightsum released its first single, “Vanilla,” in June 2021, with the video racking up more than 20 million views on YouTube.
The music has a saccharine flavor, with video images of candy-sprinkled ice cream cones and lyrics including “my heart is like a rainbow.”
Weinsanto said he got swept away with their Los Angeles, California, performance. “I was like a fan girl,” he confessed. “I was impressed by how professional they are for their age.…Some of the girls were quite shy, but not once they hit the stage.”
For their group photo, he dressed all eight members in Weinsanto, mixing up looks from his first three collections.
Weinsanto’s partner in the venture is BNV, an acronym for Brand New Vision, a Hong Kong-based start-up that bills itself as a fashion-centric metaverse destination for 3D product creation, tokenization, community building and interoperable wearability.
“We want to demystify the whole thing,” said BNV founder Richard Hobbs, acknowledging that many Web3 newbies find daunting the prospect of buying crypto currency, getting a digital wallet and wading into the burgeoning world of digital collectibles. “We see BNV as a stepping stone to the economy of fashion in the metaverse.”
Hobbs said BNV’s aim is to create fashion experiences in the metaverse that are immersive, interactive and accessible. Lightsum’s is dubbed “M3taLove.”
The platform is building a music-festival style environment in the style of Buckminster Fuller, the American architect prized for his futuristic geodesic domes.
Hobbs said BNV has a “metaverse tailoring team” creating the 3D versions of Weinsanto’s sketches. “It becomes literally a piece of art,” he said.
The project will be displayed as holograms on Sept. 26 at cultural space 3537 in Paris, where the designer will unveil his spring 2023 collection, and host a sprawling party.
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