Startup DREST bags £15 million for luxury fashion gaming platform that taps in to the metaverse
London-based DREST, a luxury fashion, beauty, lifestyle and metaverse gaming firm, has raised £15 million of funding to continue the development of its new product proposition, DREST Game 2.0.
Launched in 2019 by Lucy Yeomans, the former Editor-in-Chief of Porter, Net-A-Porter.com and Harper’s Bazaar UK, DREST has raised £30 million in total to date, and works with over 260 brands including Breitling, Cartier, Christian Louboutin, Fendi, Gucci, Prada and Valentino.
It merges the worlds of luxury fashion, beauty and lifestyle with the metaverse, offering players the chance to exhibit and improve their styling talent using hyper-realistic avatars.
Through its in-game challenges, it is a platform for user-generated content, with the digital fashion assortment provided by Farfetch as well as brands directly, allowing players to discover, style and shop the latest collections.
The investment round was agreed with the family office of DREST Co-Founder and Co-Chair Graham Edwards.
He says: “We’re delighted to be able to support Lucy in her quest to bring the merged worlds of gaming and fashion to an excitingly large global audience.”
Lisa Bridgett, CEO at DREST, says: “We are thrilled to have secured investment to help us scale DREST, especially in such a tough market. This is testament to the strength of our product delivery and pipeline of ideas.”
“We are now ready to take the business to the next level, and offer a new one-of-a-kind experience to our users while maintaining the core elements of the game.”
“There is an undeniable interest in gaming from the luxury fashion and lifestyle industries and we are very well positioned to cater to this increasing demand. We very much look forward to the next chapter.”
DREST is preparing to roll-out globally an improved, metaverse enabled version of its current product, which will include a series of new features.
Further plans include scaling the venture through the developer ecosystem, marketing channels and strategic revenue streams as well as building on the user base growth experienced by the platform.
Additional games within the Web3 and lifestyle space are being explored and will enter into a R&D phase over the next 18 months.
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