In 2016 in New York, a Louis Vuitton model walked down the Spring Show catwalk presented as a character out of a virtual world. With her pink hair this techno princess wore – as well as the Vuitton clothes and accessories – an air of videogame modernity.
Visitors to the show will have already seen her avatar version posturing on posters as part of the accompanying advertising campaign.
The aesthetic presentation of character has always been a fundamental part of video game creation. And in fashion the aesthetic presentation of clothes now increasingly means incorporating gaming into that look.
There is a good business case for this. More and more women are playing computer games, so this cross over will broaden the audience for both the games and the clothes.
Through this trend, models now turn into game characters, and the corresponding physical qualities of each category come together in new ways that allow fashion brands to re-frame their products – be it an outfit or a bag etc.
Another brand active in this growing relationship between fashion and gaming is Moschino, which digitises its clothes and accessories so that Sims characters can model them.
But what effect will this overlap between games and fashion have on society’s idea of the ideal woman?
If you look at Lara Croft in 2011 her figure is a Kardashian one. The Kardashians today are seen by some as fashion icons, but their surgery-supported idealised female form has been manipulated until it reaches the kind of exaggeration popular in computer games.
But interestingly this obviously sexualised aesthetic is now being undermined by the the other effect of this games/fashion crossover, by which I mean the influence of fashion on gaming.
So, if you look at Lara Croft nowadays, yes she still has those curves, but her whole demeanour is less obviously sexualised and instead more like the non-binary and androgynous look that traditionally motors the runways and catwalks.
So the influence of games on fashion in making the models look more like androids, and the influence of fashion on gaming is making characters less sexualised and more non-binary looking.
It is where these two trends intersect that we might find society’s new idea of the perfect woman.