The HFDA is the first fashion organisation to utilise Decentraland for its fashion and tech conference, discussing future’s possibilities

Suzy Menkes will be the keynote speaker of the Budapest Fashion & Tech Summit

The Hungarian Fashion & Design Agency organises the Budapest Fashion & Tech Summit fashion conference featuring international experts for the fourth time to which thousands of viewers are expected. This year’s event conquers the digital world since, besides on social media, you can follow it in the virtual space of the metaverse called Decentraland. Furthermore, the Agency will open a virtual showroom during the conference where the exhibited Hungarian fashion and design products from the Budapest Select Concept Store’s offer can be bought in the traditional manner or using NFT.

Between the 1^st and 2^nd of December, the Agency is organising the BFTS conference. Its presentations and programmes are free for the audience and the professionals. You can follow the two-day event on the BFTS’s official Facebook page, where domestic and international speakers will share their professional views on different topics, such as sustainability, e-commerce, education, technological development, or ‘fashion business’, in video calls. In addition, one of the global logistic partners of the sector, a key actor in the world’s most widely known fashion events, DHL, also joined the international conference.

In 2020, 4000 viewers from 30 countries attended the conference. They heard presentations of such acknowledged professionals as the style icon and fashion expert Anna Dello Russo, a former employee of Condé Nast Italia and creative editor of Vogue Japan; Luceny Fofana, Burberry’s marketing director; and Stefan Siegel, founder of Not Just a Label, a website putting great emphasis on contemporary and entrant designers. The BFTS will feature the renowned experts of the industry this December as well; moreover, it can boast a keynote speaker of world-fame. Suzy Menkes, British journalist and fashion critic, known as the uncrowned queen of fashion journalism and the most highly esteemed fashion journalist worldwide, will be the keynote speaker at the conference.

Among the main topics of BFTS 2021 will be innovation and sustainability, and these issues will be in focus at different programmes and roundtable discussions of the event. At the fourth conference, technological novelties will not only be introduced by international speakers and professional discussions but will be demonstrated to the visitors with a particular solution. After famous brands such as Coca-Cola, Louis Vuitton, and Gucci, the HFDA also took significant steps on the new scene of digital development.

“Technology keeps evolving, and thus in the world of metaverses created by the combination of the Internet and virtual and augmented reality, infinite possibilities arise. The HFDA will be one of the first fashion industry agencies worldwide to appear in the metaverse and thus provides an opportunity for Hungarian and regional designers to sell their products using NFT.” – highlighted Zsófia Bata-Jakab. The HFDA’s CEO added: “the BFTS is an excellent platform for us to continue these innovative solutions and reach our long-term goal, to put Budapest on the map of innovative fashion capitals as a regional fashion centre and to play a leading role in making the Central European region more sustainable.”

The Agency will appear in the digital world of the metaverse called Decentraland with a virtually created showroom that fans of technological innovation can entirely walk through. You can view the unique pieces displayed in the digital space, and, with just one click, you can buy them on the Budapest Select Concept Store’s page. The Agency’s webshop offers customers almost 70 different Hungarian fashion, design, and beauty brands. Furthermore, the virtual world offers new ways: the designers’ creations will be available in the form of NFTs (non-fungible tokens), and besides the products, in Decentraland, you can also follow BFTS’s programmes and presentations.

As an integrative organisation, the Agency initiates an international discussion with the region’s fashion industry institutions and featuring renowned international experts by launching the digital conference. In this year’s Budapest Fashion & Tech Summit, fashion industry actors of the V4 will get an accentuated role. The event pays special attention to channelling the neighbouring countries into the programme to provide regional fashion industry actors, from designers to large companies and the professional press, an opportunity for debuting and networking through the event’s roundtable discussions, circuit switching, and presentations.