In a post in 2016 we wondered if in future consumers would ever stop buying real clothes to opt for a cheaper and more convenient choice - a digital wardrobe. At the time we compared dressing yourself in digital clothes to a fun activity, like playing with paper dolls.
As the years passed, digital wardrobes actually arrived on the fashion scene: last year Norwegian brand Carlings created the Neo-Ex collection, in partnership with AI influencer Perl. The collection featured 19-pieces that can be digitally applied on a real photograph by their in-house digital 3D designers.
Besides, in May this year Dapper Labs (better known for creating the CryptoKitties blockchain phenomenon), Dutch startup and digital fashion house The Fabricant and artist Johanna Jaskowska, creator of one of Instagram Stories' most popular filters, Beauty3000, created a unique digital dress. Dubbed "Iridescence", the dress was sold at an auction at the Ethereal Summit in New York for $9,500, and it was paid in crytptocurrency.
There are currently new developments for what regards digital fashion thanks to Drest, the world's first interactive luxury styling app.
The game was conceived by Lucy Yeomans, former Harper's Bazaar UK Editor-in-Chief and founding editor-in-chief of Net-A-Porter's Porter magazine.
Drest, which has a team of 75 and a private investor (Graham Edwards, founder of commercial real estate company Telereal Trillium), is a platform that allows users to become fashion stylists.
Players are given a creative challenge (say dressing a client for a red carpet event), they can then choose a model (but Yeomans hopes one day people will be able to dress avatars of themselves as well), hair, make-up, locations, backdrops and - obviously - garments and accessories. Once they are finished, they can share their visual creations in-app and across social media and even compete against each other submitting the looks to a community homepage where users can rate them and receive virtual prizes.
So far so good, but there are some fashionable twists along the way: while Drest is free and users start with a virtual budget of "Drest dollars", they can also buy more packages to get a higher budget (say $5,000 "Drest dollars" for $3.99) and afford in this way more digital clothes and accessories.
Yet Drest is not just about gaming, downloadable content and micro-transactions, there's also ecommerce: players can indeed shop the products they style in real time thanks to unique partnerships that the app launched with 100 brands, including Gucci, Prada, Stella McCartney, Valentino and Burberry. Gucci will also be involved in a six-month collaboration that will allow users to go through a series of challenges with designs - ready-to-wear, bags, shoes and accessories - from its A/W 2019 collection.
Farfetch will provide most of the real-life versions of the fashion products on the app, but there will also be a selection of products from independent brands. The deal is mutually rewarding for the parties involved as Drest will be Farfetch's affiliate partner and will get a commission fee for every transaction done.
Drest will also come up with a series of philanthropic partnerships and it is planning to donate 5% of every in-game micro-transaction to causes going from digital responsibility and mental health to body positivity and female empowerment.
While there will be a full Drest launch in 2020, in the meantime users all over the world can download the app on The App Store and Google Play and enjoy early access to a range of initial features.
The gaming model behind Drest is Farmville, combined with other styling apps such as Glu Mobile's Kim Kardashian: Hollywood and Covet Fashion (that offers users the chance to do fashion challenges styling models with digitally rendered real designer clothes and accessories) or Lovelooks, that allows players to dress paper dolls up and earn points they can use for real items.
In a way all these apps are new versions of the highly addictive and fun Polyvore, that helped users making digital mood boards of products, but that ceased operations in 2018. Yet these fashion apps also represent a new fashion future.
Drest is indeed a gaming experience merged with ecommerce that hopes to reach out to younger, as well as female, customers. Millennial and Gen Z consumers represent a group of mobile-first shoppers that may become acquainted with luxury labels via such apps, but it is estimated that there is a high number of women who play mobile-games and who are likely to make an in-app purchase. Brands hope therefore to generate real revenue from these main groups of users.
Yet Drest is another proof that the future of fashion may be (at least partially) in digital wardrobes. Some labels have already jumped on board: a few brands and fashion houses collaborated with virtual models and infuencers such as Shudu and Lil' Miquela; Louis Vuitton chose for its S/S 2016 advertising campaign a virtual model, Lightning, the heroine of role-playing and storytelling game "Final Fantasy", and the French maison recently became the first luxury brand to partner with a video game, Riot Games' "League of Legends".
Louis Vuitton made indeed a branded custom trophy case to house the Summoner's Cup at the game's world championship and also announced it will be offering in-game skins and a capsule collection designed by Nicolas Ghesquière.
This strategy is perfectly understandable when you think how players of videogames such as Fortnite (Epic Games), invest real money to get original skins for their characters as they are a sign of status and skill (a few months ago Nike made sneakers for Fortnite players...). League of Legends has nearly 8 million peak daily players, so Louis Vuitton would be exposed to millions of potential new clients.
Previous experiences about partnerships between fashion houses and videogame producers have actually proved to be extremely beneficial for the fashion brands involved as the number of gamers who are also potential fashion buyers is higher than the actual fashionistas who are already customers of that specific brand. Among the examples of previous collaborations we may remember ASOS and Moschino that both partnered with The Sims creating in-game collections matched with real-life capsule collections.
What will digital wardrobes imply for brands apart from a potential growth? Well, there will have to be new regulations about the use of logos and the representation of virtual products. Powerful luxury brands will also have to enter special licensing agreements with videogame producers.
For what regards consumers, well, there seems to be more pros than cons: as stated in previous posts, digital clothes represent an eco-friendly solution for all fans of social media and in particular for those influencers and wanna-be influencers obsessed by the "Outfit of the Day" concept. Cheap digital clothes would indeed guarantee you could easily change your looks (or the looks of your avatar or favourite model) without going bankrupt, without cluttering your wardrobe and, last but not least, without killing the planet.
On top of that digital clothes may be the ultimate democratisation of fashion: ordinary people may not be able to buy the clothes they see on social media advertised by celebrities, models or influencers. Digital clothes allow instead users to buy luxury fashion (or even Haute Couture?) for a very small amount of money.
Besides, users who play with styling apps that offer the chance to buy real clothes may become more aware about how to match a piece with another and this may help them acquiring more confidence when they actually buy something online. In a nutshell, a user may see a bag, experiment with it on the app, realise this could be a versatile piece in a real wardrobe and buy it (could this practice reduce the problems caused by the culture of returns?).
Brands partnering with apps like Drest may also find useful the feedback they may receive: if users play a lot with a bag, for example, they may realise that product is successful, and invest more in promoting it.
The cons? Well, fashion designers are not trained to design for videogames and some creations do not automatically translate into 3D models. It takes a 2D pattern-cutting software, 3D design software, and rendering software to create digital fashion collections like The Fabricant's or Carlings'. Besides, digital 3D designers also employ a long time adjusting a digital creations on a real photograph (so get ready for a new version of "slow fashion" that it is not made by traditional artisans, but by digital designers). At the same time - and this is something you may add to the pros list - right because not everybody is capable of creating digital 3D designs, if digital fashion becomes a trend and a new market, we may need to train more people in this field. So the time may have come for universities to start offering courses not just in fashion design, but in digital fashion design.
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