Analysis of US consumers by Quantum Metrics till late March reveals, online revenues of apparel retailers declined 11 per cent year-on-year, their overall online revenue increased 50 per cent. This indicates the rising importance of platforms that let people engage with clothes digitally.

Users of fashion try-on apps are doubling each week. Users are spending 50 per cent more time on these apps and trying almost double as many outfits per user, says Ben Chiang, co-founder and CEO of the six-month old fashion gaming app Drest. Similarly, data from App Annie reveals, overall time spent on apps has increased by 20 per cent globally with an increase in apps that allow consumers to maintain normality while staying at home.

Opportunity to increase customer engagement

Digital platforms offer brands an opportunity to increase engagement, attract new customers and harness the power of fashion as a respite from real life. For digital players, this could serve as an unexpected catalyst that helps transition digitized clothes from fun experiment to must-have tool. The Forma app, launched in 2019, lets users try on fashion virtually by uploading a front-facing image of themselves or selecting a model. Thousands of outfits on the app, from brands such as Marc Jacobs, Proenza Schouler and Farfetch, are sourced directly. Brands can also add a Forma try-on option to their e-commerce pages. The company has seen a “huge jump” in inbound requests from brands and retailers, with pilots in the works.

Using virtual games to boost sales

Drest, a fashion styling game created by former magazine editor Lucy Yeomans lets players dress model avatars in digital versions of real designer clothes. Users can compete in style challenges, pay for in-game extras and click to buy the products from brands like Gucci, Burberry and Farfetch. In addition to the dramatic increases in app installs, sharing and connectivity have moved to the next level.

Roblox, which has offered virtual Nikes, added a user-generated content store to provide players with a catalogue to buy digital hats, hair, wings and glasses — all designed by other users — to dress their in-game avatars. The monthly average revenue for full-time creators selling items on the Roblox UGC store is about $26,000, with the most successful making an annual income that’s in the high six figures The top-selling item, a pair of “Deal With It” shades, sold 500,000 times.

Creators and designers understand their audience because they are in the same age category as buyers, believes chief business officer of Roblox, Craig Donato. While the platform originally was popular with children and Gen Z, now more than 40 per cent of users are older than 13.

A fertile environment for innovations

This unprecedented time is providing a fertile environment for digital designers to test concepts beyond games and apps. Last week, digital fashion house The Fabricant began testing Leela, a platform that creates 3D avatars from users’ submitted selfies. They can then see themselves in the same types of digital designs that last year sold for $9,500 at a blockchain conference.

Jonas Niedermüller and Grigorij Aronov have introduced digital fashion brand Rohbau with a collection of hoodies designed by Central Saint Martins alum Assaf Reeb. For €40, customers can submit an image that is then dressed in one of four hoodies that are chrome or transparent.

Online store visits to the brand, launched on 21 February, have doubled with sales increasing by 500 per cent, and influencer posts about the brand received approximately 49,000 likes.

Once the lockdown ends, many of these new trends will continue. As Niedermüller says, inertia is strong and everybody keeps doing more of the same when things are fine, so sometimes it takes something bigger to break the inertia.