PRISMATIC VENTURES: As more fashion and apparel brands dive into the metaverse, Pantone has teamed up with Spatial Labs (SLabs) for the company’s first wearable hardware product, LNQ. Through this new strategic partnership, Pantone is magnifying its focus on digital transformation and experimentation with digital and physical products and how they relate to color.
The blockchain-enabled technology, which SLabs refers to as “the wearable internet,” was founded by the digital architect Iddris Sandu. It is financially backed by Marcy Venture Partners, which was started by Jay-Z, Jay Brown and Larry Marcus. Describing SLabs as “a design and hardware VC studio,” a Pantone spokeswoman said it is “assisting us in redefining the color process.”
To announce the strategic partnership, an event is slated for Saturday night at NeueHouse in Los Angeles. The gathering will have an interactive activation from Pantone and remarks from Pantone’s general manager and vice president Ellen Cheng. Pantone will be offering a SkinTone Guide in the LNQ app for users to apply to their metaverse characters.
LNQ is the first project by SLabs that aims to change the way products and fashion interact in both the digital and physical worlds. Apparel, wearable items and other items are in the mix of the LNQ ecosystem. With LNQ, users can create avatars, which are also known as auras, to reflect their digital identities that can be customized with wearables purchased in the app or in real life.
As part of the union, Pantone and SLabs will create collaborative limited-edition clothing that will be released at a later date.
Pantone served up six colors for the first collaborative collection that are existing Pantone’s colors. Those six colors — a cosmic blue (Pantone 2728 C), playful pink coral (Pantone 709 C), faded lilac (Pantone 2107 C), grounding burnt orange (Pantone 17-1449), dramatic charcoal black (Pantone 19-4104) and a quite creamy beige (Pantone 13-0400) — will be used by SLabs for their first wearables, according to a Pantone spokesperson.
Pantone also worked with SLabs on the color palette that it uses for branding. Looking ahead, the partnership is said to be just the beginning with more wearable products and other discussions and iterations on how color standards can be applied in the physical and digital worlds seamlessly, the company spokeswoman said.
Pantone has been on the march to delve deeper into creating physical and digital properties as they relate to color, and further explore the metaverse. The company worked with the artist Polygon1993 to release nine NFTs inspired by Pantone’s Color of the Year “Very Peri”(17-3938). And last fall, Pantone rolled out Pantone Connect to give designers more options for working within the hybrid environment.
