How AR brought KHAITE’s latest fashion line directly to consumers
By: Ashley Nelson
Tags: Development, Engineering, Fashion, New York Fashion Week, Augmented Reality

At ROSE we build relationships around fast and comprehensive solutions. Our goal when taking on projects is to build seamless solutions and provide a path for further innovation. We want to be a repeat partner for augmented reality. We find the path forward through innovation and then build on that existing framework. This process had led us to our second partnership with KHAITE. This week we launched our second experience with the high-powered fashion brand, and over a short period of time we’ve been able to increase sales and bring AR into the hands of fashion lovers.

What We Did

As the fashion world had to adapt and move to a purely digital landscape — fashion shows had to be pushed to video, new clothing lines had to be shipped to prospective buyers — brands had to move quickly to break through all of the noise. ROSE and Chandelier Creative helped KHAITE bring their newest collection to life. With emerging technology ROSE was able to bring KHAITE’s footwear designs to the homes of their customers, buyers and the market giving customers a deep visual experience unlike any other fashion brand has been able to accomplish. As the world continues to grapple with these unprecedented times, this technology will become a cornerstone of how fashion powerhouses market their designs to their customers.

ROSE decided to build a WebAR application for accessibility purposes and to take the burden off consumers. The WebAR experience is widely-supported, deeply interactive and highlights the unique details of KHAITE’s footwear designs in a way that offers endless creative freedom for the user. KHAITE shipped lookbooks that had QR codes embedded within the experience, made by Chandelier Creative, that when scanned take you to the AR experience where users can see the shoes to scale in their own homes. This allows consumers to tap whichever shoes they’d like to get a closer look at and place them in their homes. This allowed customers to get a feel for the items without being able to see them in person. This experience allowed KHAITE to create a visual experience that otherwise would only exist inside one of their showrooms.

In the second iteration of the experience, for KHAITE’s pre-fall 2021 collection, ROSE expanded the experience to include models rendered in augmented reality, allowing for users to be able to see the clothing in the way it was meant to be seen. While still using WebAR, this second experience utilized green screen video to build a full runway show with models wearing the new line as they walk up and down whatever environment the user chooses.

Challenges

Understanding the mathematics of 3D space is a learning curve in itself, but creating an experience accessible in a browser, as opposed to a native mobile application, makes things even more difficult with issues like sensor permissions and browser compatibility.

Adding light sources to a scene requires a careful balance between the existing, real-life lighting observed by the camera and computed lighting that best accentuates the highlights and shadows of the models in the AR scene. This challenge was multiplied tenfold as we created specific lighting setups to complement each unique shoe model. The material of each model was a major consideration; a shoe with a soft, quilted insole and white leather straps needed soft, glowing illumination, whereas a black patent leather boot needed bright point lights that played off the glossy reflectivity of the material. The end result was an experience that tailors to each model, allowing users to see each one in its best light.

When we started on the second KHAITE experience, we ran up against challenges that came with showcasing an entire clothing line. KHAITE is a premium brand which places a lot of emphasis on the quality and texture of the materials for their garments and accessories. WebAR is a resource constrained medium, meaning lower-file sizes and compression are required. Capturing 4K, high framerate and high-quality assets for delivery via the web is a challenge. Involving models and movement increases the difficulty of capturing high quality assets. Thankfully, we were able to get incredibly high quality green screen footage enabling the quality of the looks to shine through.

Impact

As the fashion world grapples with how to convert sales and stay afloat amid the pandemic, finding ways to integrate experiences with seamless shopping capabilities is now the only viable option. Within this experience, the sales were proof enough that this execution works for high-fashion labels. Fashion is a tactile and textured experience, and amid social distancing brands have hurdles to jump to create moving experiences for consumers. Companies are integrating new technology to bring fashion shows to people’s phones, computers, and inside their homes.

For the first experience ROSE built for KHAITE, sales increased by significantly in just a few short weeks. Evan Rose, CEO and founder of ROSE, said, “We are proud to have partnered with KHAITE and Chandelier Creative to create an experience that changes how consumers engage with physical products in an increasingly digital world. We’re excited to be a part of driving how the retail and fashion industries engage with consumers.”

As this current climate continues, and shoppers continue to have decreased consumer confidence, focusing on the clothes and the experience that can be had without in-person experiences are more important than ever. Using augmented reality for elevating fashion in this time of social distancing allows for a rich, interactive experience for all users and customers. AR allows for the color, texture and life of garments to come to life.