Gucci’s Digital Sneaker Brings The Self Expression Of Fashion To Digital Communities
Gucci launched its Gucci Sneaker Garage, a new section of its App, which will act as a platform entirely dedicated to the House’s eclectic sneakers and their digital counterparts.
The program brings together a mix of storytelling, gaming and user-generated content, and is home to the first virtual sneakers ever imagined and designed by Creative Director Alessandro Michele: the Gucci Virtual 25. These hyper-real sneakers can only be purchased virtually, for users to wear with their digital personas in the augmented reality and in virtual environments. Fostering the unexpected bond Gucci developed with gamers’ communities, the Gucci Virtual 25 will launch together with the full spectrum of the House’s sneakers, and will be wearable on the popular immersive platforms Roblox and VRChat through game patches included in the purchase.
The platform also gives to gamers an access to the ultimate tool to experiment Gucci sneakers by creating their own model, tweaking, hybridizing and combining elements from the existing designs or from new takes on them. Through this interactive entertainment, Gucci involves its enthusiasts in a new dimension with the products and codes of the House, allowing users to bring their self-expression to post-physical and unexplored territories.
Overall, the project keeps pushing one-step further the relationship between the world of fashion and that of gaming and digital environments, pioneered through Gucci Arcade: the ever-growing section of the Gucci App launched in July 2019 dedicated to games, inspired by the retro arcades. The brand also pursued this direction with its two-chapter Instagram project #24HourAce, where a collective of multimedia artists reflected on the rise of stimulating ASMR and on the way in which the digital landscape has evolved over the years, as well as partnering with Snap Inc. on Try-On Snapchat Lenses, with the global e-sports entertainment organization Fnatic, and with the world’s favourite mobile tennis game: Tennis Clash.
Gucci’s new program plays to the power of understanding down aging, Gucci’s current as well as next generation market, the power of technology and its synergy to fashion. Gaming is after all a favorite pastime of many.
Lots of people have friendships which were created on and continue to happen solely in-game. It stands to reason that people for whom these things are true would put as much or more stock in their virtual appearance as they do in their physical “real life” appearance–we already see this in the importance of picking a username who reflects who you are or perhaps who you’d like to be. Self expression and vanity transcend material reality.
In any arena of human interaction, people will be interested in differentiating themselves from the pack. This is not a gimmick or a passing trend. It is a new and inevitable aspect of fashion which Gucci is pioneering.
