WELCOME TO THE SILVER FCTRY
Welcome to the SILVER FCTRY, AMBUSH®’s own metaverse. From its pop-art origins and references to Italian design, the AMBUSH® SILVER FCTRY emerges from the virtual spacescape and offers a flight from physical reality. The gates of the AMBUSH® SILVER FCTRY open only during limited times, celebrating touchpoint moments for the brand. Each experience in the AMBUSH® metaverse is different from the last.
Landing in the AMBUSH® SILVER FCTRY, a distinct chain-shaped space shuttle, the first thing to encounter is a shiny lobby with brilliant white walls, reflective floors, and the night sky through wide-open windows. Posters —like digital wheat-pasting— line the walls of the entrance. Through tunnel-like hallways are red and white furniture inspired by Italian designs from the ‘60s and ‘70s, an inviting maze-like foyer for lounging in the otherworld.
Four hallways surround the shuttle’s entrance, each leading to a unique area to explore. To the left, the ODEUM, a widescreen theater; to the right, a LIBRARY. Running through a white hallway guides users to the WORKSHOP. This mimetic storefront brings elements of the real-life AMBUSH® WORKSHOP into the digital metaverse. Behind is a whimsical PARK full of imagination and room to play.
The SILVER FCTRY name is inspired by Andy Warhol’s Silver Factory from 1963, a creative studio that at one time represented a futuristic space, “utterly different to what had come before.” Where Andy Warhol’s vision changed the course of art history, his approach to creativity paved the way for future creators to reconsider their own imaginations. His work offered a new way for the public to look at and understand the meaning of art, commerce, and popular culture. The Factory served as a hub for creatives across disciplines —visual artists, musicians, actors, designers, and more— to come together, removing themselves from the confines of mainstream society.
Like Warhol’s forward-thinking tin-foil-covered Factory, the AMBUSH® SILVER FCTRY represents the future of AMBUSH® and its official entrance into new dimensions. Acting as a creative epicenter for the brand’s designers and community members to come together, the SILVER FCTRY encourages creativity and innovation. Free-thinkers from all walks of life are invited to join the activities inside the SILVER FCTRY, bridging their real lives with the virtual. The SILVER FCTRY name is multi-dimensional, a silver nod to the AMBUSH® DNA as a jewellery brand and its origins in pop-art-inspired design.
Beyond pop-art, the SILVER FCTRY’s interior recalls elements of art and design that have been a source of inspiration for AMBUSH® creative director YOON. From James Turrell’s iconic Ganzfeld lightscapes to the retro-futuristic deep space interior of 2001: A Space Odyssey, these references back to worldly creations ground the SILVER FCTRY in our reality. Yet it also presents us with something distinctly new. references back to worldly creations ground the SILVER FCTRY in our reality. Yet it also presents us with something distinctly new.
EXPLORE SILVER FCTRY
WORKSHOP
Uncannily similar to the AMBUSH® WORKSHOP in Shanghai, the SILVER FCTRY WORKSHOP space replicates iconic design elements from the brand’s latest physical store. A giant LED sphere plays a rotation of globular videos. A mix of campaign imagery and collaborations—like footage from the recent AMBUSH x ASTRO BOY by BAIT film—spin into a celestial image.
A visit to the AMBUSH® store in Shanghai mirrors the digital experience, presenting a monthly rotation of movie clips from the brand’s vault in tandem with its collections. The digital WORKSHOP is just like the store: the furniture, floor, walls, and spatial design mimic aspects of real life. Textured concrete walls and a green carpet give the WORKSHOP a modern yet industrial design, Even the shopping experience has been translated into the digital realm, with the addition of unique virtual products like exclusive NFTs.
Central to the store is a display of an iconic golden ring, the POW!® ENERGON, based on the special friends & family NFT design. The POW!® ENERGON melts from voxel-style, cubular pixels to a smooth, glossy metallic surface. Its appearance as an original NFT marked the official entrance of AMBUSH® into web3. Emanating from the WORKSHOP is also the POW!® GLOW IN THE DARK (GITD) —a glowing POW!® ring that serves as the central power source for SILVER FCTRY. Both a currency and fuel of life, the POW!® GITD symbolizes technology and commerce in the AMBUSH® Universe and beyond.
ODEUM
If you’ve ever experienced one of James Turrell’s Ganzfeld artworks, you’ve encountered a unique spatial experience in which light and color disorient, giving a peculiar illusion of floating. The SILVER FCTRY ODEUM is the AMBUSH® answer to this experience, bringing aural light and illusionary space into the digital realm. The atmosphere of the ODEUM mirrors the soothing colours of the sky, shifting with the time of day in AMBUSH®’s local Tokyo time zone. From deep orange in the morning to brilliant cyan of daylight to indigo blue with nightfall, each colour transitions slowly, in real-time.
Through the vastness of the ODEUM, users encounter a large theatre screen—the scale of an eleven-story building. The floor disappears, and avatars appear to float in space at varying heights. The screen displays footage from the Autumn-Winter 2022 Collection Show, first presented at Milan Fashion Week in late February, 2022. The ODEUM’s space is filled with floating transparent cubes, each reflecting scenes from the widescreen. The screen disappears into a fog from afar, reappearing as a mirage in the distance the closer the avatar moves. Users can run until the screen envelops their view, as if entering the runway for themselves.
LIBRARY
Functioning as a museum for the brand, the LIBRARY is a place to explore the archives of past collections and collaborations through interactive screens placed throughout the fluid architecture of the room. Contents appear only as users explore, approaching the room’s periphery. Users can go back in time through the history of AMBUSH®, encountering a range of collaborations from Nike and Astro Boy to Moët, Gentle Monster, and Beats. Clips from the earliest AMBUSH® ready-to-wear collections glitch and mash with soothing images of the ocean or sunset.
The LIBRARY space is otherworldly. Reminiscent of the inner workings of botanical plant matter or the imagined surface of an exoplanet, the dome-like walls are climbing with skeletal veins. Its hue is a warm orange, contrasting with the sterile white of the SILVER FCTRY’s outer hallways. A kind of organic circuit board, the LIBRARY serves as a central point for AMBUSH® to communicate its past, present, and future.
PARK
A park, a psychedelic fantasy, a radical paradise… The SILVER FCTRY PARK is a surreal outdoor concept free from the harsh realities of the real world. Featuring a mix of playful characters and classic design motifs from the brand, users are free to roam the mountainous hillsides. Jewellery charms are blown up into giant silver monuments and scattered throughout the fantastical scenery. The charms become like mascots for the brand; products that can be purchased from within the virtual WORKSHOP are now on display as parts of the PARK’s landscape. Through interactive games, users can hunt and discover secret pathways and goods hidden throughout the PARK, initiated at significant moments for the brand.
Green fields and hills are dotted with animated flowers, rainbow mushrooms, and undefinable hybrid creatures under a bright blue sky; ponds, waterfalls and other features also appear. Elements of science fiction merge with the toonish atmosphere. The PARK removes practical barriers, offering an escape from the angst-ridden adult consciousness into an infantile utopian vision. The innocence of the PARK’s playful atmosphere is startled by oversized pill capsules, sinister characters, and misplaced silver screws as if mechanical debris has fallen from the celestial sphere. The sun appears not from the sky but from below the surface of water, just beyond the shore’s edge.
Some elements of the AMBUSH® SILVER FCTRY mimic real life, like a virtual showroom and furniture for avatars to relax and socialize, while others spur from pure imagination. From the joyfully surreal and psychedelic PARK to the LIBRARY’s cosmic rhizome of glowing plant-like membrane, these unique digital spaces beckon to be explored, to uncover hidden treasures, and to simply enjoy life beyond the restraints of the physical world.
AMBUSH® SILVER FCTRY