Everything You Need to Know About Fashion's Foray into Gaming
Beginning with the introduction of e-commerce in the 1990s, high fashion houses have since nursed a long-standing affair with digital media. The digitalization of the fashion industry yielded mass social media marketing campaigns, experiments with virtual reality, and digital fashion shows, all of which have been fruitful tactics for increasing brand exposure and boosting revenue. Fashion’s total tech transformation isn’t quite over yet, however, as the industry taps into the 3-billion person audience of its new digital realm: gaming.
This month, Balenciaga released its own video game to present the house’s Fall/Winter 2021 collection. Housed on the brand’s website and titled Afterworld: The Age of Tomorrow, the game takes players on an allegorical adventure through five levels–one of which is a Balenciaga store—where they encounter other Balenciaga-clad characters.
While maybe the most buzz-worthy, Balenciaga’s game isn’t the first of its kind. Fashion dress-up games have been around since the '90s, when Cher's closet in Clueless made getting dressed look as easy as pressing a button. In 1996, Mattel Media and Digital Domain introduced Barbie Fashion Designer, which allowed players to create a virtual runway show and printable clothes for their Barbie dolls. Other facets of the fashion industry were then brought into the virtual space around 2012 with Fashion Week Live, a video game collaboration between 505 Games, Funcom, IMG Worldwide, and DKNY in which users strive to build a virtual career in fashion through styling models and networking.
The 2010s also saw the rise of the Final Fantasy role-playing video game in the fashion space, with characters from the gaming franchise modeling Prada's Spring/Summer 2012 men's collection as well as its lead figure, Lightning, starring in a 2016 Louis Vuitton campaign. The game's characters were known for their style even before they received designer endorsements, which made them fitting virtual brand ambassadors. Nicolas Ghesquire and Lightning even spoke out about the collaboration with the creative director calling the avatar a "global, heroic woman" and the character expressing that Ghesquire "changed the way I see myself."
Among the first brands to tap into the virtual world in recent seasons, Moschino’s 2019 collaboration with EA Games was a particularly big hit amongst 2000s nostalgics as it was inspired by The Sims, a life simulation game first released in 2000. Not only could players dress their avatars in Moschino pieces, but the brand also released a digital-inspired capsule collection available for purchase in stores. This year, Gucci also launched its Off the Grid campaign with The Sims 4, offering its sustainable capsule as downloadable looks within the digital universe.
Louis Vuitton released a similar collaboration with League of Legends this year with a League-inspired capsule collection and a virtual drop of Louis Vuitton items for players to buy with real money inside the game. Marc Jacobs and Valentino followed by creating virtual looks for quarantined fans to wear inside the social simulation game Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
The collaborations of years past paved the way for high fashion brands to take an even greater step into the gaming world in 2020: the creation of their own games rather than the involvement in those that already exist. Before Balenciaga’s Afterworld: The Age of Tomorrow, Burberry released its first multiplayer video game called B Surf to promote its TB Summer Monogram campaign. The game allows players to choose a full Burberry outfit and surfboard before racing others around a track.
Fashion brands are following a very specific and calculated format with their games by focusing on low stakes exploration, adventure, and escapism, and it couldn't align more perfectly with the way 2020 has shaped the high fashion consumer base. The pandemic forced the entire world online, leaving typical fashion followers with a hunger for excitement to replace the theatrics of physical shows. Seeing collections through the eyes of a virtual character in a uniquely curated world is a brand new concept, but it also simulates the physical experience of going to a show.
COVID-19's takeover also left consumers yearning for open communication and transparancy from their favorite brands, as the disconnection of the world made participation more important than ever. Consumers want to be involved in everything their favorite brands are doing—after all, distance and separation are getting old—and for luxury brands, gaming is a more interactive path to exposure than an Instagram ad or a commercial.
Games like Afterworld and B Surf also fuel a key 2020-inspired fire, but not a pandemic-related one: the resurgance of 2000s aesthetics. While millennials have historically revered the '90s for fashion inspiration, the Gen Z market looks to the not-so-distant Y2K era with nostalgia for Juicy Couture tracksuits and Von Dutch hats. Early aughts-era hobbies aren't excluded from this aesthetic, and playing video games on a family computer was a key pastime for those who grew up in the early 2000s. Screengrabs from The Sims, Barbie games, and Lizzie McGuire's online supersite are all over popular Y2K inspo boards, so its a particularly lucrative time for fashion brands to fuse their marketing tactics with the world of online gaming.
As 2020 comes to a long-awaited close, the disrupted fashion industry is eager to return to a semblance of normalcy as soon as possible. To be a major fashion player in the next decade, though, designers will need to maintain a dynamic presence across multiple realms of the Internet in order to stay relevant with online-native consumers.
