In 2020, luxury fashion has officially fallen strongly for games or, as described less fondly, began to put serious “gamerbait” resources: gambling projects or monkeys aimed at young fashion enthusiasts who are less flexible versus classic legacy, listless and now largely online luxury seduction techniques.
From each and every angle, from each and every angle, from the first thoughtful raids to Nintendo’s Animal Crossing pandemic (Coach, Valentino and Marc Jacobs et al. ); ComplexCon’s compelling but low-fidelity transition (100,000 participants) to complexland virtual grocery shopping festival; or Balenciaga’s retro-futuristic bombardment of immersive technology, which invokes vibrations, in the patented game Afterworld: The Age of Tomorrow to showcase its AW21 collection, game-centric platforms are now valid social spaces to soak up cutting-edge pop culture.
As e-commerce-infused projects progress, DREST can be said to be at the forefront: the interactive online sales and taste game it provides to fashion enthusiasts, who are industry professionals, virtual access to haute couture, and a community of competitor-corroborators. Although it is not yet as visually immersive as its new metaversarios built on game engines or with 26-monthly production budgets throughout Hollywood (see Balenciaga), it is a wide variety of luxury products (virtual iterations precisely designed from genuine items). and industry connections (founded through Lucy Yeomans, former editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar UK and is in partnership with e-commerce giant Farfetch) makes a force to consider.
Now, just over a year after its release (October 2019), it is re-evaluating only how to drive engagement and in-game sales, but also how what happens in the game can influence external behaviors, evolving the platform for the future an IRL unusually. and a more expansive pop culture.
Here, Yeomans and COO Lisa Bridgett talk about RVR’s elastic premise (originally referring to genuine items, virtual facts, then buyable on Reality) as a selection philosophy for what will follow.
Drest, the summary
The DREST app allows users to play as a professional stylist through a menu of virtual products (digital twins carefully reproduced from real-world pieces) of over two hundred luxury lopasses, adding Gucci, Bottega Veneta, Loewe, Stella McCartney, Fenty and more. Recently, the Breitling lopass watch. They can play or just spend buying groceries (anything used in the game can also be entered into the wish list or buy IRL, in the app), Bridgett revealed: “There is a transparent correlation between the game and what ends up in player purchases. ] baskets. “The taste occurs in avatars, selected from a handful of super, or a diversity of tight epasses largely representative of the civilian fan base.
Brand partnerships mean that brands can establish demanding compromised situations, live for a limited time, in which players exclusively use their products, expanding their visibility beyond the range of other commonly available garments/brands. Situations allow users to locate locations, backgrounds and stickers to fuel their creativity, in designer concepts, those elements (or other ephemeral elements of taste) are completely customized and individualized. Brand experience.
Feeding from the outset a difficult competitive community environment, appearances are graded through a set of rules (a technology-based measure to ensure that the criteria are met) and through colleagues playing DREST. A higher score of “critical eye” means in-game Invoices rewards to buy more virtual clothing, but also (imitating the privileges of a professional IRL promotion) for additional makeup, places, etc. For example, “reputation points” promise an artistic director’s degree, while paint ethics scores are connected to the number of demanding situations facing each other.
Lately, the platform is experiencing a 50% month-to-month build-up in biological facilities, with 57% of young users (21-39 years), asserting their ability to bond with the coveted next generation. up to 33 minutes a day in the app. Brands, of course, revel in shared knowledge about users’ game behavior, a voyeuristic portal more valuable than any discussion group.
“People think I was angry even as I left [Harper’s Bazaar] to move on to [Net-a-Porter magazine] Porter and then to DREST, but I sought to bring fashion and creativity to where the women are and give them the kind of access I had as editor,” Yeomans says. “DREST has presented a way to close the developing hole between brands and their potential enthusiasts without brands having to absolutely sacrifice artistic control. “
Background, culture, commerce: presentation of a richer RVR
Translating genuine things into virtual and playable versions has been DREST: in the spring of 2020, respected British makeup artist Mary Greenwell joined as a representative to keep content attractive, as modern as sartorial content. those who press want to contextualize fashion through a larger and more genuine cultural lens: cinema, music, art or even an existing event.
In a moment of great social shock, the creation of looks for the Met Ball (though not to actually hit as a form of escape and anything you would expect from DREST) will unite, and maximum probably usurped, through political inauguration. fashion (a recent challenge), taste based on a fashion tale or disguised as a video clip or movie.
“How do we combine virtual and physical authenticity, our genuine global and our fantastic global?It’s a big challenge in the 21st century,” Bridgett says.
A platform at the speed of pop culture
It is a concept that lends itself well to a platform that can potentially adapt to the speed of pop culture in a way that print magazines can no longer do and that gives top e-commerce sites a clumsy advertising look. In a logical extension of the DREST project To make the inaccessible irresistibly accessible, Yeomans suggests that this will manifest itself by introducing maximum real-time availability of the elements of taste that in the past you can only see in Vogue. com just a few days after the show, along with a lapidary subpoena.
For example, enthusiasts will soon have hairstyles in Gucci or Prada presentations (where and when their primary location can be now), thanks to an ongoing partnership with hair legend Sam McKnight. There is also recently a DREST podcast, which can simply be added to the game at a later date.
The RVR 2021 flavor will also provide cross-sectoral pollination, adding promotional fun for major fashion-adjacent media, as illustrated in a recent 9-day collaboration with Warner Bros. Entertainment. Access the entire fetishized wardrobe through Wonder Woman enthusiasts (played through Gal Gadot, dressed through Welsh designer Lindy Hemming) as many key backgrounds with incredibly accurate detail.
Bridgett shows that they are already “inundated with requests from other artistic spheres”, while Yeomans describes all demanding situations as “like deploying an Exocet missile, due to insistence on the “touch”. Psychologically speaking, this represents the “staffing effect”: once a user has taken possession of an object, their perception increases, be it a Birkin bag or a Cadbury’s fruit bar
Targeted play and collaborative community
While demanding situations are the gold of advertising, empowering the “consumer” (the consumer author) is a deep, multifaceted mantra of DREST. “DREST was designed because of the importance of the agency, to allow enthusiasts to be part of the conversation, “Says Yeomans. “I also believe that this purpose was fundamental, especially for women. There is a preference to learn, about the fashion of the brands or those around you. It’s not just the end of fashion school, we keep our aspirations alive for not being too didactic with style. “
Bridgett says that “2021 will also see us increase the concentration on social and network factors”, potentially allowing more “team” play where users could, for example, collaborate on creating temperament graphics, betting on “fascinating fan teams to see appear around specific pieces or styles. “This is probably DREST’s maximum maturity ELEMENT to take us into a more hyper-realistic space.
Incoming generation and individualization
DREST is far from the hyperreality of hardcore games right now, and is based on what Bridgett describes as a planned resolution to “wait until full immersive capability is more common, available to all players” by avoiding an explosion of its fan base and actually retaining scalable gameplay. It is worth knowing that Balenciaga’s 7-minute video, complete of volumetric product capture, would have required an army of virtual creations for six months, and this is a conservative estimate.
But there are a multitude of new technologies, basically aimed at individualization, about to magnify the platform, adding an AI mapping to create dual user-avatar virtual faces in just two minutes (apparently, the preference for self-identification almost triumphs over a known avatar, every time); Virtual fabric sampling to create fashion pieces from scratch; and “real-time distributed platform”: cloud computing equipment that will make demanding live situations (where a lot of players compete against the clock) much more feasible.
Sustainability and philanthropy
Technological innovation will also drive its sustainable and philanthropic landscape, which has long been on Yeomans’ agenda. For the first time, you are already in conversations with brands about virtual product prototypes, which will allow you to serve as a pre-production control space, helping to decrease over-consumption For the latter, all players who release one of the stick insect avatars must donate a portion of the reserve prices related to the designated charity of this style : the mechanics that induce the empathy of an in-game discussion with the virtual icon itself.
This can be used to identify DREST as a backlight of inline toxicity. Women can be a massive component of the player population right now (current estimates recommend 50% worldwide), but that doesn’t mean culture has become quite sunny culture. site; Riot Games, among others, is lately reading about using a secure blockchain currency that you will pay for when players show intelligent sportsmanship.
“If you have the privilege of having a platform like this, it’s imperative to be very transparent and think about what you stand for. Being sublime is no longer just about dressing in the right clothes, it’s also about attitude and intent, firmness and purpose,” Yeomans says. Increasingly, it turns out that what happens in the game probably won’t stay there.
I am a journalist and logo strata who specializes in defining and predicting the intersections between technology, pop culture and customer behavior.
I am a journalist and logo strata that specializes in defining and predicting the intersections between technology, pop culture and customer behavior, analyzing all facets of retail engagement, from virtual commerce and logo communication to spatial design, lately I am Brand Director. Commitment, covering trends, data and inventions similar to retail and logo communications, pop culture and the media, in Global Development Agency Stylus. I have spoken at many events, including Retail Design Expo, International Retail Design Conference, Milan Design Week and Decoded Fashion; I am a normal SHOWstudio worker; founding member of the expert group of the Laboratory of Digital Anthropology at the London College of Fashion and an expert contributor to the “racing accelerator” Mastered. I’ve written articles for The Times, Dazed