Augmented Reality (AR) is probably the most hyped vertical compared to Virtual Reality and Mixed Reality. The reason is that it seems to be the most promising short-term technology that can actually be adopted by the masses.

Let's look at how you can take advantage of AR apps to reach hundreds of millions of customers and enhance their user journeys that connect Physical and Virtual Fashion experiences, known as Phygital Fashion. Additionally, we want to go deeper into the production and technology that everyone is required to understand before and while producing AR fashion.

Today the most common way to experience AR fashion is through Social Media platforms like Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok using just your phone. However, there are also 3rd party platforms that can help you build your own custom AR experience such as Lightship from Niantic. Additionally, WebAR platforms are now enabling users to experience AR on mobile phones without even installing any app.

AR Fashion experiences

1. Image Tracking

The app recognizes some specified object in the picture such as a Logo, QR code, text, or anything else that you select, and then shows an image, video, or 3D object

Above is an example where one of the most innovative Virtual Fashion companies RTFKT & Nike has recently released its AR hoodie and now recently we replicated that for one of our clients and are offering it to anyone through Virtuall.

2. Fit on body & face

Another very popular way of using AR for fashion is to fit the fashion item directly on the person displayed in the camera. This is more advanced functionality and requires platform support for that. The quality highly depends on where you want your AR filter to be displayed. In this way, brands can showcase their collections in a cool way targeting specific audiences.

3. Object Placement

You can also place objects (images, videos, or 3D) into the physical world and allow customers to interact with them. One of the most interesting examples is Virtual Showrooms where you can allow customers to preview and interact with fashion collections.

Production

Now let's talk about how actually to produce these experiences. Our objective at Virtuall is to add virtual components to existing physical fashion collections fast and cost-effectively, starting with the idea to scale across various 3D destinations and hundreds of items. So we are going to look at AR from that angle.

Although you can place images and videos using AR, the most effective way of displaying fashion items is 3D. So for any of the experiences mentioned above one should start with actually creating a 3D virtual clone of an existing fashion item and then if you want to add extra spice to it, you need to animate it. To create a 3D AR model artists need to go through 4 steps:

1. Creating 3D model from pictures (2D to 3D)

So going from just pictures to 3D models is actually an artistic process that requires artists' interpretation and understanding of what the brand actually is looking for. This is especially true when you need to create for a specific application (Snapchat, Instagram, Shopify, Roblox, ..). In these scenarios, it's not enough to "just create a perfect replica" because each virtual environment is forced to comply with its technical limitations and requirements that inevitably reduces quality, change the form, shape, materials, etc. The software typically used during this step is Marvelous Designer, Blender, Maya, Zbrush, and Adobe Substance Painter.

2. Adapting a 3D model for a specific destination

Once we have a 3D model that we like, we now need to adapt the model for a specific environment. This step includes reducing the number of polygons, resizing and removing textures and materials, fitting the item on top of the new Avatar, and many other things. This is crucial because users are expecting to load the model quickly and in the AR case interact with them in real-time not to speak about fit on the body and similar use cases.

3. Animations

To bring more immersive experiences to the users one might want to animate the 3D fashion item. Take a look at how we animated wings for one of our customers using Blender.

4. Place the model in the AR environment

This step requires a custom approach for every single app (environment) as it depends on how the app and user want to use the model. Here's the list of the biggest apps and their AR development environments that you can bring Fashion AR experiences to:

1. Instagram - your fashion to Instagram users with SparkAR
2. Snapchat - your fashion to Snapchat users with Lens Studio
3. TikTok - your fashion to TikTok users with Effect House
4. Niantic (the company behind PokemonGo) - your fashion to custom AR games with Lightship
5. AR Code - your fashion to users without requiring them to install any apps using Web AR technology
6. Other AR apps such as uMake install as a stand-alone app and allow you to build customer experiences simpler than Lightship but with more limited possibilities

As you can see for every single app/environment you would need to perform a separate development step to adapt the 3D model differently. To make it even more complex, every environment comes with technical limitations and differences, the same feature can be better on one than others. The comparison would require its own blog post but here's a short comparison between the major AR Apps.

Applications	Recognition	Speed	Quality
Lightship	5	5	5
Lens Studio	5	5	4
SparkAR	4	4	3
Effect House	2	4	3

Conclusions

There are many different use-cases, production steps, and environments to actually get to the results in just AR, not to talk about other 3D use-cases such as E-commerce 3D placement, Virtual Worlds, Games, Metaverse, Virtual Try-On, etc. And typically brands would like to reach the users within multiple channels, however, because of the involved complexities they are often just testing out one with only a few items or as one of their PR stunts.

We at Virtuall have removed all these complexities so that brands can only focus on their customers and fashion rather than the production and scaling of 3D models.

The Fashion Tech report just got released by The Business of Fashion and McKinsey and we summarized the trends and key takeaways through the lens of the phygital infrastructure company, Virtuall.

As fashion executives consider where to focus their attention and direct their resources, the report explores five technology-driven imperatives for the industry in this report:

• Metaverse Reality Check: Virtual goods and extended reality
• Hyper Personalisation: Data- and AI-led marketing and e-commerce
• Connected Stores: In-store customer experience with mobile apps and micro-fulfillment
• End-to-End Upgrade: AI-powered value chain integration
• Traceability First: Blockchain and tracking technology for sustainability

Here are 7 most important trends covered in this report relevant to the Phygital and Virtual fashion

• Fashion companies are using technology to become more resilient, transparent, and sustainable, with investments expected to increase from 1.6-1.8% of sales in 2021 to 3-3.5% by 2030, those brands that don't use advanced technology will face challenges.
• Virtual goods spending reached around $110 billion in 2021, which is expected to increase to $135 billion by 2024. The report suggests that innovative fashion brands could generate up to 5% of their revenue from activities in the metaverse in the next 2 to 5 years, driven by virtual skins in digital worlds, and NFTs can help to solve industry pain points and bolster customer loyalty.
• In 2021, 48% of customers who switched to online shopping did so because of the Covid-19 pandemic, 27% cited convenience, 11% cited product availability, and 11% cited promotions. Digital interactions with fashion brands also increased, with 72% of customers reporting online interactions in 2021, expected to stabilize at 66% on average in the coming year.
• Brands have access to a growing arsenal of personalization tools and technologies to upgrade how they customize and personalize their customer relationships. 71 percent of global consumers want companies to deliver personalized communications and products, and 76 percent are unhappy when this is not offered.
• The inexorable rise of e-commerce has forced fashion players to rethink the role of physical stores. Fashion executives can address consumer pain points by using in-store mobile apps to enhance the experience. Customers who engage with in-store technology spend up to four times longer shopping than those who do not.
• In virtual spaces and on social media platforms, the appetite for creating and adapting online identities is high: approximately 70 percent of US consumers from Gen-Z to Gen-X rate their digital identity as “somewhat important” or “very important.” A similar appetite for virtual goods can be found in China, where 70 percent of luxury consumers have purchased or will consider purchasing virtual assets.
• Some believe that mass consumer adoption of virtual worlds could create significant revenue opportunities for fashion brands, while others predict that the hype around the metaverse will fade as users prove hesitant to use virtual spaces. Either way significant revenue opportunities for fashion brands will emerge. The pace of adoption will be driven by technological advancement, the interoperability between virtual environments and social acceptance.

We visited Gucci in Roblox today! It was a fascinating world to be in and discover this legendary brand.

Games and virtual worlds lend themselves very well to engaging the community and attracting new generations.

What we ask ourselves at Virtuall is how a brand can continue to engage its users in and beyond the game.
Our conclusion is that along with a great experience, the brand must continue to bring fresh content to the community to build a real following.
One-off engagements without tending might end up as abandoned gardens... 🌸

Our Product Experience Platform makes it easy for brands and agencies to continue to deliver community 3D content across multiple games. Why not engage across worlds such as Roblox and Naver Z (ZEPETO)🎮📈😊to reach further and engage longer?

“Direct to Avatar” starts here at Virtuall.

There is a very comprehensive article about how brands can reach their customers in a new and valuable way written by Catherine Seeds: “listen” to it here: https://lnkd.in/g6d7Ngiu

Virtualls’ platform enables all brands with Direct to Avatar sales and marketing capabilities. It starts with your fashion designs!

Some key proof points

Ralph Lauren released a 50-piece digital clothing collection in August 2021, available for purchase in the social networking app Zepeto.

American Eagle announced a virtual clothing collection for Bitmoji avatars in July 2021.

Gucci and The North Face, a VF Company released a joint collection of avatars on Pokémon Go in January 2021.

In March 2021 Gucci released virtual sneakers that can only be worn with AR, using technology developed by Wanna.

In Roblox, the Gucci Garden experience offers The Collector’s Room. It allows people to collect limited Gucci items in the metaverse. Gucci, from their initial sales of the collectible items, collected 286,000,000 Robux from the game. This is approx 3M USD.

Fashion is not only physical, but today it's also Virtual and you can monetize that. Maybe in ways, you didn't even consider. Possibly millions of dollars?

Nike, Adidas , DOLCE&GABBANA, and Lacoste are all legendary brands that have found an exciting path to new revenue, brand exposure, and outstanding customer experiences. It starts with their digital fashion as avatar wearables in games.

Nike alone collected 185M USD from NFTs and virtual fashion this year. Fashion in Games is already a 54B USD market.

Do you want to know how your brand can do the same? Reach out to us; we have taken a complex engagement and made it super simple for any brand!