12.99 euros for a pair of Gucci sneakers: it’s either a mistake or a rip-off. Until yesterday, at least, because for a few days it is really possible to have them and spend so little. All legal, all in order, just go to the app of the Florentine maison and scroll to the Gucci Sneaker Garage, where you can choose from various models and customize them in infinite combinations of colors, patterns and designs. You can try them virtually, thanks to augmented reality: just frame the shoes (or even your bare feet, we tried it works), and the phone screen will show what it would be like to really wear them. The effect is realistic and convincing, but we have already seen a lot of augmented reality apps for clothing and furniture, although that of Gucci is among the best.
Bits and vectors
The designer Alessandro Michele has done more: he designed an entirely virtual model, made not of leather and rubber but of bits and vectors. They are called Gucci Virtual 25, and they do not go unnoticed: rather massive, they adopt a mix of highlighter colors (phosphorescent green, candy pink and sky blue) and would be perfect on the feet of a Futurama robot.
The Virtual 25 can only be worn in augmented and virtual reality, even if then in times of lockdown the difference with physical reality tends to be fatally reduced. Many, in fact, have not worn shoes for months, with rare exceptions for the episodes away from home, so a pair of virtual sneakers makes perfect sense: they can be shown to friends as they were real, without even trying to lace them, for those who do. Too bad they will only be seen by those using VR Chat, a massive online multiplayer, or Roblox, a gaming platform that reached a $ 38 billion valuation after an IPO on March 10.
Digital fashion
The shoes are Gucci’s “first digital model”, however the brand is no stranger to the world of in-app purchases. The fashion house already sells arcade games in its application made Pokémon GO avatars with Gucci x North Face clothes, which have been geolocated near the stores. He then experimented with the integration with the digital world also in a collection inspired by Sims, available both in real shops and in those of the popular videogame, assuming that it can still be called a platform that replicates everyday life in bits, down to the smallest details and the smallest interactions.
The sneakers were developed in collaboration with the Belarusian fashion startup Wanna. CEO Sergey Arkhangelskiy told Business of Fashion that “in five or perhaps ten years, a relatively large part of the revenue of fashion brands will come from digital products.” And inevitably, it will be a market where the youngest will be protagonists, the same ones who today buy skins for Fortnite: it is therefore better to capitalize immediately on the popularity of the brand among the lower age groups.
The true and the false
Gucci’s move adds another piece to the increasingly complex discourse of digital ownership, but also fits in the wake of uniqueness and reproducibility in the world of bits. Unlike Beeple’s work, sneakers are not bought with NFT, and they are not a unique model: indeed, as virtual, they are available in infinite copies all the same. Today the technology to create them is complex and very few would be able to copy them, to sell fake Gucci virtual shoes online, but what will happen when the fakes also arrive in the virtual world?