The Coronavirus emergency disrupted the lives of each and everyone of us in different ways. Fashion was among the many industries that suffered a major blow as many events, collaborations and presentations were cancelled this year. The emergency prompted many people from the fashion industry to rethink its role and the format of fashion presentations.
As seen in previous posts, a few houses turned to hybrid presentations where possible, with physical and digital events; others opted for entirely digital shows or explored the possibilities given by videogames such as Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
The game, developed for Nintendo Switch, was released in March 2020, amid the global Coronavirus lockdown. Being unable to go out, spending time on a island vacation simulator where we could forget our problems, worries and anxieties, relax fishing, farming and building homes, and visit strangers or friends on other islands, turned into a desirable experience and into a success for Nintendo that, by June this year, sold 22.4 million units of the game (it is the second best selling game on the Nintendo Switch system).
Animal Crossing: New Horizons allows you to buy - with your hard-earned bells, the island currency - clothes and accessories from the Able Sisters shop or create your own clothes with a dedicated design app. This aspect didn't pass unnoticed to fashion fans and fashion houses and, a few months ago, we looked at the first interactions between fashion companies and the videogame.
The latest to jump on board is Carolina Sarria, last week the fashion designer came up with a special show on Animal Crossing.
The event was unique for different reasons: first of all, Sarria treated this virtual show like a physicial event, so she enlisted set designer Stefan Beckman, hair stylist Anthony Turner and make-up artist Mark Carrasquillo.
Casting director Nicola Kast focused on diversity and came up with a great group of models, among them Dilone, Aaron Philip, Ruth Bell, Raisa Flowers, Indya Moore and the late activist and gay and trans rights pioneer Marsha P Johnson, who appeared as their avatars.
As a bonus, there were also special guests sitting in the front row, among them Andy Warhol, all of them sitting on the infamous stone stools Animal Crossing users craft by collecting materials on their islands.
The mini capsule collection, entitled "Them, and Theirs" was inspired by Warhol's "Ladies And Gentlemen" series of Polaroids that featured Marsha P. Johnson as a model, and included Pop Arty dresses in bright and bold shades, but also cubist jackets and virtual renditions of Sarria's coats with the Virgin of Guadalupe. Animal Crossing fans will be able to buy the looks from Carolina Sarria's site and they will then receive the code to download the designs to their Nintendo Switch.
But there's more: sales of Sarria's in-game versions of her designs will benefit the Marsha P. Johnson Institute, dedicated to protecting the rights of Black trans people, or the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
So what's the final verdict for this fashion runway format? Well, there's pros and cons. Among the cons there's the fact that, while digital collections look visually striking, we are definitely losing the tactile pleasure. Virtual designs are indeed mere images and can never achieve the same tactile qualities as the physical model (mind you, in this case some of the digital looks are directly derived from real Sarria designs, so you can actually buy some of these looks like the faux fur coat for yourself rather than for your avatar...). Besides, though this format looks adorable and fun, the designer and her team still had to invest time and energy in developing the project (you can follow the work behind the scenes on the designer's Instagram page).
Yet, there's many pros as well, first of all the fact that Sarria definitely saved money, as she didn't have to book a venue, invite hundreds of people and even pay for some of their accomodation and travel expenses. In the case of Carolina Sarria, there was also another pro: the money from the sale of the virtual looks will be donated, so this is an experiment in fashion gamification with a cause, rather than just a project of fashion gamification as we have seen in other cases. This proves that it is possible to make a strong statement via fashion, but also via videogames.
This is not the first Animal Crossing show we have seen since the game was released and it is another step towards the development of a new format. Decades, or rather centuries have gone since the early days of fashion presentations and we have seen how from showing a few designs privately to clients, the show developed into veritable spectacles, grand events that saw collaborations with famous set and costume designers, musicians, make-up artists, singers and bands.
Sarria has made a point by making her virtual designs very affordable ($5,00 each), something that may draw not just fashion fans who may want to buy something new but who may not have the money to do so for too many reasons (Coronavirus caused job cuts, while other people have opted for smartworking and may not be investing in new wardrobes, but opting for more comfy looks), but also Animal Crossing aficionados on the lookout for a cool outfit or a party dress.
The collaborations between fashion designers and videogames is providing us with insights into the future of fashion where we may see at first a strong dichotomy between digital designs and real pieces, but, as the years pass, we will probably witness a sort of harmony between these two worlds, so you can bet that we will increasingly rely on these formats and on digital platforms to launch experimental collections and strong messages as well.
Talking about Animal Crossing and launching messages, the game was recently used also for political reasons: presidential candidate Joe Biden is using it to post virtual campaign ads as campaign events are unsafe because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
While in May US Congress Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez used the game to reach out to fans informally and have fun visiting random player islands as her avatar (wearing a pink T-shirt with her initials), Biden's presidential campaign introduced four different official yard signs in Animal Crossing that users can download by scanning QR codes through the Nintendo Switch online app (this is not the first time political adverts appear in a videogame as in 2008 adverts for Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama appeared in 18 games through Microsoft Corp's Xbox Live service, including "NBA Live 08" for Xbox Live 360). Guess it's only a matter of days now before the first fashion campaigns tailored for Animal Crossing hit our paradise islands...
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