Going Virtually Fashionable in Second Life

Via The Business of Fashion, I was reading up about last week's meeting at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston that brought together representatives from Linden Labs, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dolce & Gabbana, Max Mara, and Italian filmmaker Giacomo Faenza to discuss the presence of the fashion industry in digital media. The event was sponsored by Moda e Technologia, an Italian nonprofit organization that promotes exchange of ideas between fashion and technology industries, and turned to discussions about Second Life and using virtual avatars to promote the brands in digital space. Dennis Valle, director of media interaction at Dolce & Gabbana, a company CNET credits as one of the few mavericks in the fashion industry willing to venture out into the digital world, says, "Advergame, edutainment, advertorial, and docudrama are new terms that will become part of companies' everyday use...Sensorial marketing, a way to understand consumers' actions, thoughts, and intentions, could translate into a new way to meet their needs." But in an industry in which "sensorial" essentially includes trying on of the garment and touching of the fabric, can virtual avatars ever completely replace my brick-and-mortar shopping experience (the irony of this question coming from someone who claims to be a blogger is not lost on me)?

We've already seen some examples of companies going digital/virtual, including the Target "model-less" fashion show and the growing influence of online shops that carry designer goods, as told in a New York Times article a month ago. For everyday consumers to become more comfortable with virtual window shopping, I think companies should keep the ease of interactivity firmly planted at the center of any new digital ventures. In other words, offer me something that will enhance my shopping experience, not replace or exclude my existing online or brick-and-mortar shopping habits. For instance, make your avatar on Second Life not only a virtual representative of your brand, but someone who can help my avatar - therefore, me - interact with your brand (this is a simple concept that derives from what in-store customer representatives should be). Tie the three components of virtual, online (virtual and online could be the same thing but I'm trying to distinguish between a virtual reality shopping experience as in Second Life vs. online shopping on a site like Nordstrom.com), and brick-and-mortar together for me, so that my browsing, and hopefully purchasing, experience can be seamless. Make it possible for me to sample your clothes or bags via avatars for proportion, but also include options to look at the merchandise in a 360 degree real image view, and ultimately allowing me to place an order and pick it up in person in a couple of hours.

Perhaps I'm being a bit old-fashioned here in not advocating a "one-stop shopping" destination, but for me, digital world is still a way to make living easier and more interesting, not one to replace my actual living (my husband might disagree, seeing the amount of time I spend on my laptop...). That said, there's a lot of fashionable happenings going on in Second Life than I can keep up with, some of which you can check out in established communities of designers and fashionistas, Lifestyles blog by Linden Labs, Second Style online magazine, and even a virtual fashion police that exposes the faux pas from the streets of Second Life. On a related note, CNET posted a cleverly-named article about the increasing usage of CAD (computer-aided design) and CAM (computer-aided manufacturing) software in the fashion industry. By the way, the avatar you see above is from Second Life designer Miko Omegamu, whose brand "Icing" is quickly gaining fans within that community - now, if I were a virtual avatar, that is how I want to present myself to my virtual friends, not this.

Image: Courtesy of Miko Omegamu via LindenLifestyles.com.