Damara Inglês
Metaverse Designer and Strategist
Damara Inglês is a Metaverse Designer and Strategist, focused on Digital Fashion and Immersive experiences.
She was born in Luanda (Angola), grew up in Lisboa (Portugal) and graduated in London (UK), as such the notions of intersectionality, minority empowerment and nomadic thought are inherent to my work process.
In 2019 she started her meta verse adventure after graduating from the Fashion Media Practice and Criticism BA + MA at the at the London College of Fashion, University of Arts London.
In there she realise that her practice appreciates the visceral materiality and craft of analogue fashion, as well as the emancipatory value of Digital Fashion, exploring technology as lenses to transform the Fashion industry through sustainability, innovation and disruptive voices. Her work aims to blende the notions of Object and Digital-Aura, Experience and Memory, Mysticism and Technology.
After graduation she won the Kering Awards for Sustainable Fashion in 2019, followed by a three months internship with Gucci’s Social Media and Copyright Team in Milan - Italy. Have worked for Gucci is a dream come true, and although the pandemic disrupted the experience in many ways, it also allowed me to experience Fashion in Times of Crisis.
In 2020 Damara debuted her Digital Fashion practice in collaboration with VR designer SUTU on a first-of-its-kind immersive Fashion Show "Fabric of Reality", produced in collaboration with the Fashion Innovation Agency, Kaleidoscope and Verizon Media, winning the Campaign Experience Awards of 2020/2021.
In 2021 Damara became an Official Lens Creator for Snapchat and designing “Kazumbi” in collaboration with HERVISIONS and Snapchat Spectacles, expanding her digital skills and gaining early access to disruptive technologies. During her practice she collects different elements of personal meaning, so far she collected three: “Extended-Tactility”, “Bio-Cyborg” and “Intersectional Digitisation” where she explores the complexity of her own identity as an African woman in the diaspora and in the Metaverse.
Damara recently collaborated with Lisbon Fashion Week as the Creative Director of the “Metaphysical” March 2022 campaign and with Crypto Fashion Week where she showcased her design on a pioneering Metaverse stage.
She is constantly looking for new challenges, skills and thought processes that can expand her creative process, and currently conceptualising her own Metaverse studio that will focus on Experience Design, Education and Community Building.
Damara loves the democratic value of tech skills and has spoken to students in institutions as the London College of Fashion, Central Saint Martins, Conde Nast University and Ravensbourne University. Her ultimate dream would be to start a Metaverse skills hub in Luanda - Angola.
Through her practice she has learned directly from brands like UAL, Kering, Gucci, Microsoft, RYOT, Verizon Media, Somerset House. Damara also collaborated with agencies such as the Centre for Sustainable Fashion, Fashion Innovation Agency, Digital Collective Makers, the Institute of Coding, the Institute of Digital Fashion, Hervisions, the Immersive Kind, Brazil Immersive Fashion Week, Crypto Fashion Week and Museum of Other Realities.
Damara is an Official Lens Creator for Snapchat and works directly with tech companies, fashion brands and educational institutions.
“I love to think about the intercultural and hyper social connections within the Metaverse, and dream about it as an evolutionary step of intra and inter human experiences. Not as an echo of the different categories of segregation that are part of the contemporary discourse IRL.”