Welcome to the Scoop: a weekly email series in which I quiz fashion insiders on the stories of the week. This will be a way for the Vogue Business community to synthesize and reflect on the latest headlines and get a little inside scoop every Friday.
This week’s guest is IoDF CEO Leanne Elliott Young. In 2020, alongside Cattytay, Leanne co-founded what was then called the Institute of Digital Fashion as a tech consultancy for fashion brands. Essentially, their goal is to help people like you and me understand what things like digital product passports (DPPs) are and how to use them.
Leanne is also a very recognizable figure in the London fashion scene. Always dressed in big, sculptural fashion moments, and with her signature long white-blonde hair and alien sunglasses, she looks every part the tech CEO. I called her up ahead of London Fashion Week (LFW) to get the scoop.
Hi Leanne! What’s the scoop?
We have launched a new entity, the IoDF platform, that concentrates on DPPs. It’s a new business, separate from IoDF (the agency), and it’s a big deal for us. For LFW, we wanted to build something that could showcase our new model for DPPs.
We looked at the LFW schedule, and designer Maximilian Raynor is such a jewel on it and totally in tune with what we care about. We care about people and the planet and how we can connect more people to the fashion week experience. We reached out to Max, and for this upcoming London Fashion Week, we are releasing 20 limited-edition caps together. Each hat comes with a snapshot of the IoDF DPP system, which, in this case, gives the consumer access to the brand’s LFW post-show party. We also really like the idea of physically tipping your hat to get through a door.
Beyond access to the party, does the cap lead you to a website?
The snapshot DPP acts as a portal. You scan and connect directly to the IoDF system, which verifies that the product is yours. It serves as your ticket, with additional brand gifts as incentives to scan. We don’t replace CRM, Shopify, or resale platforms; we sit above them, activating product identity across those systems.
Resale, in particular, is important because so many brands are losing to it at the moment. If you look at a brand like Rick Owens, you buy something in-store, and then it’s worth much more on resale platforms because of scarcity. The brand is getting nothing. So, for us, it’s really about building ROI in resale for brands. With DPPs, brands can tell not just how many products they sold but also how many times they were resold.
It’s really interesting that you chose Maximilian Raynor to partner with. I personally loved the outfit he made for Lisa Rinna at the Fashion Awards, but his name is growing regardless. How do you know what the right talent to invest in is?
I’ve been a part of LFW for so long, and I am emotionally attached to all of the designers. We launched our IoDF Creators fund to support that, but as you said, I spend time across the London communities, art, fashion, and tech, and you really know someone is rippling up when you see people outside of the London art circle wearing them. Art and music communities are always the first adopters of cool zeitgeist brands.
AI, AI, AI… It’s the topic of the year and the century. I know you guys at IoDF were early adopters. How would you advise other business leaders and brands to manage their teams through its adoption?