New York Fashion Week | A stylist bets on augmented reality in the face of the pandemic

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France Media Agency

For the second consecutive season, the New York ready-to-wear collections are only presented online due to the pandemic, and most of the big names of “Fashion Week” are conspicuous by their absence.

With the exception of Jason Wu, who hosted a parade on Sunday 1 for just 25 people, and lesser-known Rebecca Minkoff, who invited around 100 people to a presentation in Soho on Tuesday, with masks and social distancing.

If internet users were able to follow this presentation live on TikTok or Instagram, other fashionistas will be able to see Minkoff’s spring collection, starting Wednesday, with 360-degree images, on Yahoo.

In association with Verizon Media’s 5G production studio and their partner Yahoo Ryot Lab, the stylist used augmented reality technologies to enrich her presentation.

With their mobile phones, consumers will be able to zoom in on a fabric, walk around an item of clothing, examine its details, all of which are impossible to do even when sitting in the front row of a “real” parade.

This content “really allows the consumer to get closer to the designer and the garment without even entering a store,” Minkoff told the specialist site Women’s Wear Daily (WWD).

Many nevertheless consider the physical parades irreplaceable.

“Seeing a collection in person is much more exciting, you can feel the atmosphere, see the fabrics, there is music,” Karina Blik, a Russian model and blogger after the show, told AFP. leather shorts and summer clothes in fabrics printed with animal motifs.

With the online parades, “we lose the energy, the magic, and the social aspect”, also estimated Esther Santer, New York blogger of 30 years. “Ultimately, nothing replaces seeing in person how a garment moves, what it looks like, worn on a person”.

“It’s amazing that Minkoff managed to do that,” she added.

“It’s great to be able to go out and taste this Fashion Week because I know how much we all miss it.”

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