PARIS, June 21 — A dream come true! Until June 24, you can slip into the outfits of the world’s greatest fashion houses, including Balenciaga and Versace, thanks to new technologies. British Vogue and Snapchat have joined forces to offer the first-ever immersive and interactive augmented reality fashion exhibition that lets you experience the history and creations of several luxury brands like you’ve never seen them before.
Is technology in the process of transforming fashion and culture experiences? Such is the theme of the “Vogue x Snapchat: Redefining the Body” exhibition, curated by Edward Enninful, Vogue’s European Editorial Director, and launched at the Cannes Lions festival of creativity. For the first time ever, clothes from seven of the world’s leading luxury fashion houses are transformed through immersive digital experiences and personalized Snapchat lenses, making designer fashion accessible to all.
Technology driving inclusion
At the Centre d’art La Malmaison in Cannes, seven spaces have been fitted out, and transformed, to pay tribute to the creative universes of Dior, Gucci, Balenciaga, Kenneth Ize, Richard Quinn, Stella McCartney, and Versace. These are all houses chosen for their subversive vision of fashion, trying, through their collections, to challenge stereotypes, norms and conventions related to age, body shape and gender. And it is precisely this creative aspect that visitors to the exhibition can now discover through augmented reality experiences.
“It has always been important to me to make fashion accessible for all. Using augmented reality, Vogue x Snapchat: Redefining the Body is an exhibition that invites everyone—regardless of race, gender, sexuality and size—to experience and enjoy fashion from some of the world’s very best designers and luxury brands. It doesn’t get better than that,” explains Edward Enninful. Not content with just discovering exclusive archive garments from these great fashion houses, thanks to a simple Snapchat scan, visitors will be able to try them on virtually, as will Snapchatters around the world via Snapchat’s Lens carousel and the Dress Up tab in Lens Explorer.
They’ll also be able to access all of the exhibition’s augmented reality experiences, from Balenciaga’s opaque dark space to Stella McCartney’s digital bees pollinating mushroom spores, Gucci’s “illusionistic” mirrored set design, and the opulence of Versace’s space, in which its legendary Medusa comes to life. “Through this exhibition, and augmented reality more broadly, we hope to introduce new levels of accessibility, creativity, and expression to the fashion and design world,” said Evan Spiegel, co-founder and CEO of Snap Inc.
An ode to digital fashion
Augmented reality appears today as indispensable to, even inseparable from, the fashion industry, which is evolving at pace with the latest technologies. After news of Meta launching its first digital fashion store, with brands such as Balenciaga, Prada and Thom Browne, this exhibition seems to herald the advent of fashion that spans the physical, digital and virtual realms, allowing users of social networks and metaverses to dress their avatars, but also to access iconic clothes that would previously have been out of reach.
As part of this exhibition, Vogue and Snapchat have joined forces with DressX, the virtual fashion specialist, to create a capsule collection of limited edition merchandise. — ETX Studio
