Virtual style with real impact is drawing designers in
The app prompts users with virtual styling challenges – something like, 'dress rapper Cardi B in a look inspired by her green makeup at this year's Met Gala' – that are rated by other uses to earn you credits to put toward future projects and steps up the stylist hierarchy (a few weeks in, I'm almost about to be promoted to 'Styling Assistant').
My husband was right because I'd never taken myself for a gamer either. While I was born in the 1980s, I never much cared for them, nor had a Nintendo or Sega system of my own. I played Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego and other computer games but those were appealing because I enjoy trivia and strategy. Since then, I haven't crushed any candy and I don't warm myself up for the day with a Wordle.
I'd simply never heard of a game that appealed to me, until Drest. Yeomans was in the same boat. 'Someone invited me to play a game on Facebook years ago, and I found the whole thing quite compelling,' she says of Drest's origins. 'I thought, this is so good, but I'm not interested in any of these subjects.'
From there, Yeomans struck out to devise a fashion gaming model based on a 'real-virtual-real' dynamic. The first real is that all the items used in the game's styling challenges – Erdem Moralioglu's decadent gowns; Prada's latest leatherwear; goods from mass brands such as Reformation and Diesel; and finery from emerging labels like the jewellery company Completedworks – exist as real-life products. The game's challenge briefs are based on the pop culture personalities and sartorial trends fashion fans want to tap into right now, anything from Celine Dion's suiting preferences to basketball player Angel Reese's penchant for wearing all-black-everything.
The virtual comes in with the models users dress, avatars that Drest's team develops in partnership with the non-profit Fashion Minority Alliance to ensure as much diversity as possible in terms of ethnicity and size. Perhaps most tantalizingly for an actual stylist like me, instead of relying on real budgets to ensure the most coveted garments and accessories arrive for a photo shoot or red-carpet event, Drest's currencies range from Drest dollars to style credits – all of which can be purchased or acquired by completing challenges.
The final real is that Drest features challenges with real life prizes – a Pandora-sponsored challenge last year came with the reward of attending the British Fashion Awards. The game also has a shoppable element. If a player likes the current season knitted Alaia coat they used in a challenge (which goes for $16,940 on ssense.com), they can click over to purchase it outside the app.
All virtual stylists aside, Drest is gaining traction in the fashion industry. At the last British Fashion Awards in December, Yeomans recalls a moment that crystalized how virtual fashion gaming can give real fashion designers insight into new creative directions.
'A couple of designers came up to me and said they were obsessed with the game,' she says. 'They love seeing how players are styling their collections and are fascinated by seeing how people interpret their brand.' This, in addition to information gathered from player demographics, sponsored challenges and user anecdotes – Yeomans mentions a makeup artist who recently divulged that, since she'd used the same khaki J.W. Anderson jacket in dozens of challenges, she had decided to buy the real version – makes it fertile ground for brand development.
I find it curious that I enjoy playing a game based on the concept of my profession as much as I do. But its appeal goes beyond the fact I can style with my wildest imagination because I don't have to worry about an outfit getting stuck at the border or a competing magazine calling dibs on the look I want.
The allure of Drest lies in how the platform affords users accessibility to garments and accessories without it feeling as transactional. We all know how essential dressing is to self-expression, and a platform like this provides a near carte blanche capability for engaging with fashion without having to think about consumption. It can be just as satisfying as retail therapy, but without the same actual costs.
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CTV News
18 hours ago
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‘Superman' returns to screens with ‘kindness, flying dogs and space battles'
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CTV News
a day ago
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She ditched New York for Paris at the age of 79 and says it's the best decision she's ever made
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Mary Jane was drawn back to Paris around a decade ago after traveling to France for singing opportunities and making many friends there. 'New York City is great,' she says. 'But at different stages of your life you want different things. 'So the fantasy kind of took shape, and I thought, 'Well, I think I'd like to move to France.'' She would travel to France at least twice a year, and spent a lot of time getting to know the European country with her 'singing buddies.' 'I thought, 'Oh my, I kind of like it here,'' she says, adding that she 'wanted more quiet' and felt that New York was 'getting louder.' 'I made friends, and I liked the food.' After returning from an extended trip to the city, Mary Jane decided to bite the bullet and begin the process of relocating from New York to Paris. 'I sold my apartment for a very nice price,' she says. 'Not enough to buy an apartment in Paris. But here we are.' 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However, Mary Jane says she realized early on that she'd have to adjust her approach slightly when starting conversations with locals. 'I learned if you're going to interact with someone, the first words out of your mouth are 'Bonjour,'' she says, noting that she's found that people in France prefer to exchange pleasantries before being asked a specific question. 'A soldier taught me that when I was in a train station in Lyon and needed the toilet.' While she notes that there are many cultural differences between the US and France, Mary Jane stresses that she hasn't had much trouble adapting. However, she concedes that she finds the customer service in France to be lacking somewhat. 'I have many negative things I can say about America,' she adds. 'But Americans understand customer service. 'The French are a little bit behind. So I just learned to change my expectations. 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'My cheesemonger is about 50, and he's going to introduce me to his grandmother, who is my age. 'And I have some of my other singing buddies who are about 10 years younger than I am. Some of the other singing people are 20 years younger. There's a whole variety.' 'Simple needs' While she hasn't really noticed much of a difference in the cost of living in France, Mary Jane, who lives in Issy-les-Moulineaux, in southwestern Paris, points out that she initially wanted to buy an apartment there, but ultimately couldn't afford it. 'At least not in a neighborhood where I would live,' she adds. 'That was a surprise to me. 'Although apartment ownership is another kind of bureaucratic nightmare. 'So maybe I'll just be a renter… I have simple needs at this point in my life. That's one of the advantages. I have simple needs, and I know what I want.' 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Mary Jane tries to practice her French as much as possible, stressing, 'I don't have decades ahead of me to master' the language. 'The phrase, 'She speaks French,' is meaningless, because it says nothing about level,' she says. 'There's reading comprehension. There's listening comprehension. There's talking. There's all these different categories. 'The fact that you can order in a restaurant, do your shopping and take public transportation doesn't mean you can address the Assemblée nationale (one of the houses of the Parliament of France).' Although she still enjoys her job considerably, Mary Jane doesn't work full time anymore, and feels that she has a good work/life balance. 'I get my social security (payments). I worked hard for it,' she says. 'I mean, I'm 82 years old, if I hadn't learned how to balance that by now. I mean, God help me… 'I was telling my client the other day, 'As long as we have our sight and our hearing, we can do this until we drop dead.' So that's the plan.' After nearly four years in France, Mary Jane, who currently has a renewable Carte de Séjour residence permit, feels at home in the European country and plans to apply for French citizenship in a few years time. 'I don't tend to go back to the States,' she says. 'Except, God forbid, (if there's) a death in the family. 'People say, 'Oh, so are you going home for the holidays?' No, home is where I am. I'm here.' Looking back on her decision to move to Paris at the age of 79, Mary Jane says that she doesn't necessarily think of this as a brave move, but a necessary one. 'People say, 'Oh, at your age, it's very courageous to move to France,'' she says. 'But it's not courageous. Courage means that you have fear. You're afraid, but you're able to act anyway. I wasn't afraid.' Article written by Tamara Hardingham-Gill, CNN
Globe and Mail
a day ago
- Globe and Mail
Lena Dunham on her new show Too Much, the allure of New York and TV's double standard
I love Lena Dunham. She's generous with her candour, despite the vitriol of her haters. She wants to get to the bottom of what she notices, even if the bottom isn't the prettiest place to be. With her new Netflix series, Too Much (arriving July 10), she gives us a messy heroine at a messy moment in her life – messy meaning human – and invites us to ponder whether all those romantic comedies we've internalized are good for us or not. Jessica, played by Megan Stalter (the overconfident nepo-baby agent on Hacks), is a fledgling producer at a New York commercial agency. She has a loving but chaotic family – grandmother (Rhea Perlman), mother (Rita Wilson), older sister (Dunham) – and a callous ex-boyfriend (Michael Zegen), who stopped loving her and then found countless ways to blame her for it. She accepts a short-term assignment at the London office, where her co-workers, led by Richard E. Grant, dismiss her in new, British ways. And then she meets Felix (Will Sharpe), a musician whose own screwed-up-ness is disguised by his dreamboat exterior. Jessica's three-steps-forward, two-back progress is mirrored by the flashbacks Dunham employs to deepen her story, and Stalter is as physically and emotionally fearless as Dunham herself was on her previous series, the zeitgeist-grabbing Girls. Reader, she made me cry. Yeah, yeah, parts of Too Much sound semi-autobiographical: Dunham made some blunders amplified by social media; moved from New York to London in 2021 (I recommend her New Yorker essay about breaking up with the city she grew up in, as the child of two artist parents); met and married a musician, Luis Felber, who co-created the series. But name a decent piece of art that isn't. Here are highlights from a recent video interview with Dunham. What questions were you asking yourself while writing Too Much? I was trying to look at and deconstruct the influences that gave me my idea of what being an adult woman is supposed to look like. As a kid I was obsessed with The Mary Tyler Moore Show, That Girl, Gidget. That unflappable, 'She's always getting herself into a sticky situation and getting herself out of it.' In your 20s, you don't know what you're supposed to be like; that's what Girls was about. Once I hit 30, I started thinking about all these 'supposed-tos,' and the ways in which my life didn't look like that. I remember calling my mother, really upset: 'I see all these women in the street, it's seven in the morning and they've already exercised and made their own coffee at home and the coffee is in a canister, and I cannot get out of bed before 9:30 if I'm not working, and that's on a good day.' I realized that Mary Richards, if she was around now, would definitely make herself a smoothie and put on exercise pants and a matching vest, because Mary was equipped and ready. I had this consistent feeling of being behind, being unprepared. Looking around the room, thinking, 'There's supposed to be an adult here' – oh god, it's me. So I wanted to centre in a romantic comedy a woman who realistically struggles with the things I and many people I know struggle with. Minus the montage of her suddenly cleaning her apartment and blowing out her hair and she's ready for life. There's a beautiful moment where Felix tells Jess he loves her body. How important was that to you? It was important to me and to Meg that whatever Jess is beating herself up about, it's not about what her body looks like. We talked a lot about how to do it. I've dated people who said a version of this to me: 'I don't want you to worry, your body not being size zero is not a problem for me.' They may have said it lightly more elegantly than that, but only lightly. When I met my husband, 'Don't worry' was not a part of the dialogue. The compliments were never, 'Insert light neg, but.' He never said anything that made me feel like there was another reality in which I could look a different way. I didn't realize I'd been missing that until I had it. Because even the body positivity movement is saying, 'Don't worry, it's okay.' What if we just took all that out of the picture? Did moving to London reawaken you creatively in the way you hoped it would? Yes. Although I published that essay about leaving New York, then promptly headed back to shoot all over the city all summer. It was the most me thing ever. My timing has never been ideal. I met my husband in London, that was obviously a big thing. I've found great collaborators here. But it also created some space for me to reimmerse myself in reading, watching films, painting. Girls was an amazing but all-encompassing experience. New York is such a productivity-based culture, it's easy to forget that you can't drive a car that's out of gas. I feel lucky in a way that my chronic health condition told me that I was burnt out. Typically for you, you've been open about your Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, endometriosis and fibromyalgia. It doesn't always feel like a luxury when you get sat on your butt by your own body turning against you. But it was a luxury to be able to pause. Let's talk about this maddening phenomenon where women who write some version of their experience get dismissed as limited, while men who do the same are hailed as authentic. I do get frustrated, not even on my own behalf, because I so often see women or queer people who are making things that are deeply developed pieces of work, which are being treated like they're attention-seeking tweets. It's hard for some people to believe that I got into this for reasons other than attention or fame. But truly, I don't even like compliments that much; they stress me out and make me turn red, and I immediately have to turn around and compliment the other person. I'm always like, 'Am I making enough of an appreciative face that they'll think I'm humble, but also like the compliment?' The reason I do any of this is the work. Do the harsh comments bother you? If I make you so angry, please go find something you enjoy. There's more content than there's ever been. I actually cannot relate to the way people act as if they're having their eyes held open and images forced into their brains like in Clockwork Orange. I wouldn't even click on a picture of Trump on Insta. There's an Easter egg in the final episode of Too Much, where we hear your voice call 'cut.' You sound so happy. It's a bit embarrassing, I sound like I'm a fourth-grader directing a school play. But my directing style is enthusiastic. I really get in there with actors, we're working it out, I'm gesticulating a lot. I'm super collaborative; I hire people I love and trust and try to give them a lot of agency. I can't help but notice that men are often treated like auteurs, whereas people will ask me stuff like, 'Were you in the editing room?' Of course I'm there. There's this assumption that the craft, the aesthetic, aren't yours, and my favourite part is the craft. Tell me a craft-related story. When I directed the film Catherine Called Birdy – A fantastic film, starring Bella Ramsey. On Netflix. On the first day, I showed up early to walk through the medieval village alone. I will never forget it as long as I live. It was my favourite book when I was 10, I wanted to make it for 25 years, and there I was, walking in a village we created. I cannot believe this is my job. I hope everyone who works on my sets feels that way: 'I can't believe that we get to do this together.' This interview has been edited and condensed.
