Your local Zara may be looking a little bit different these days. The uber popular fashion retailer has temporarily ditched traditional mannequins and window displays for an augmented reality fashion show, featuring the fast fashion brand’s best looks on top international models.
A bold window display encourages shoppers to download the Zara app available on iOS and Android to view the experience. After downloading, you can simply point your phones at the window display or special podiums set up throughout the store to activate an augmented reality fashion show experience.
Wearing trendy looks from the current studio collection, models Léa Julian and Fran Summers pose, speak, and strut in 12 short scenes–giving you the chance to see how the clothes will truly look and move in real life. If you like what you see, shoppers can purchase the outfits as a whole or item-by-item with the touch of a button in the app or within the store.
The holographic experience is not Zara’s first exploration into innovative technology for marketing purposes–the retailer launched a click and collect store front in London last January–but it’s definitely the most extensive.
68 cameras were used on a 170 square meter stage to capture the experience, and Zara has undertaken a massive advertising campaign for the project. The fast fashion retailer implemented an in store Wi-Fi network to encourage shoppers to take advantage of the experience, and shoppers are encouraged within the app to share screenshots or visuals of the high tech experience on their own personal Instagram and Twitter handles.
Zara’s AR app and experience was developed by Paris-based creative director Ezra Petronio, cofounder of Self Service magazine, together with Holooh of France and Inria, a French public research body dedicated to digital science and technology.
Want to check out the holographic fashion show? You’ll need to hit up your local Zara in the next two weeks. The experience, launched April 12th in 120 Zara stores worldwide and will begin phasing out near the end of the month. If you won’t be in stores before then, no worries–packages from online orders will include a QR code that can be used to view the experience in AR, and a modified version of the experience can be viewed on zara.com
