Digital fashion company DRESSX announces $2 million raise in a Seed round

DRESSX, a mission-driven digital fashion company disrupting a $1.3 trillion apparel industry, announced that it has raised $2 million in a Seed round. 

The oversubscribed round was co-led by The Artemis Fund and Alpha Edison and included additional funding from Unlock Venture Partners, One Way Ventures, Signal Peak Ventures, TLF Ventures, Startup Mavericks and strategic Angel investors from fashion, tech and blockchain industries. 

The money raised by the company will help it to scale its vision to make digital clothing accessible to consumers across multiple channels and multiverses. Specifically the proceeds will be used to launch the DRESSX mobile app, build its NFT marketplace, and partner with social media, gaming, and other virtual platforms to bring digital fashion to the metaverse.    

DRESSX also partners with designers and brands to sell their digital products. Since its launch in August 2020, DRESSX has become the biggest platform for digital-only fashion clothes, with more than 100 designers on board and thousands of digital items available for purchase on the website and soon in the DRESSX app.

“As soon as we were introduced to Daria and DRESSX by one of our founders, Ksenia Yudina, we felt the connection to her 

mission and vision. Not only is she and her DRESSX team setting out to eliminate boundaries for fashion and the consumer, but, perhaps more importantly, they are on a mission to reduce the carbon footprint inherent in the overconsumption of physical clothes. 

Daria and Natalia truly understand fashion tech, its role in the metaverse, and the needs, now and in the future, of their customers.  Their industry experience and passion has already attracted the attention of a multitude of partners, and the virtual world clearly has limitless possibilities for fashion.” - Leslie Goldman, General Partner and Co-Founder, The Artemis Fund, DRESSX Board member.

The Artemis Fund invests in mission-driven female founders who build companies that democratize access to wealth, encourage sustainability, and reduce friction in the care economy. Artemis specializes in finding and leading investment rounds for revenue-generating companies, and seeks involvement at the Board level to truly engage beyond its investment dollars. Only 2% of venture capital has been deployed into female founded companies and only 9% of investment decision makers at US-based venture capital firms are women, despite evidence that women-led teams deliver higher value and returns. 

“We are proud to partner with The Artemis Fund, Alpha Edison and all our investors to scale the company. Since the beta launch of DRESSX in 2020, we invested a lot of our time and resources into the growth of digital fashion. We will continue to shape this new exciting industry that has recently started to develop exponentially fast. Our goal is to sell 1 billion fashion looks and to enable an innovative fashion experience to every consumer in the world.” - CEO and co-founder of DRESSX Daria Shapovalova

DRESSX is a female-led, female-founded company. The core team of the start-up is based in Los Angeles. All founding team members have vast experience in fashion (co-founders Daria and Natalia worked together on a number of successful fashion companies in Europe) and in tech - Head of Product at DRESSX Julie Krasnienko led marketing at Looksery (acquired by Snap Inc. in 2015).

“Creative economy and digital goods economy are the most innovative and empowering, so we bring this notion to the fashion industry to give tools to the creatives and to provide digital fashion closet and utility of the digital wearables to everyone through augmented reality, machine learning and blockchain technologies.” - COO and co-founder of DRESSX Natalia Modenova. 

Millennials and Gen Z-ers are growing increasingly concerned with the social and environmental impact of the traditional fashion industry. On the other hand, digital clothes generate almost zero waste, carbon footprints, and chemicals during their production. Working with traditional and 3D fashion designers, DRESSX offers virtual looks that can be exclusively worn on photos and videos as a substitute for buying physical clothes. 

Learn more about how DressX is leading the research on the environmental impact of digital vs. traditional fashion.