Zhang adds that the Vogue China audience, regardless of age, is extremely tech literate, meaning that they are more familiar with how to navigate virtual worlds, especially on mobile devices. Even food delivery apps, she says, might have a virtual gamified experience. “Mobile video gaming is on an exponential trajectory.”
Gaming — often considered a gateway to metaverse experiences — has an estimated audience of 488 million in China alone, according to data from gaming platform Geeiq. The global gaming audience is approximately 3 billion users, with 1.6 billion users in the Asian-Pacific region, according to data firm WARC, and the popularity of South Korea-based Zepeto — often compared to Roblox — has attracted brand partnerships including Gucci, Puma, Marine Serre and Ralph Lauren. This has inspired many global luxury brands to create virtual experiences and assets. Vogue Singapore has also been an early adopter, having introduced multiple metaverse and Web3 projects — including Balmain’s first-ever NFT via a flaming digital dress — and a virtual world on virtual reality platform Spatial.io to coincide with its September cover.
Most recently, Vogue China partnered with tech company Alibaba on an augmented reality fashion show in which “super mascots” from luxury brands walked virtual runways. In August, Burberry, partnered with Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok) to dress its avatars in 18 free virtual outfits; the related hashtag generated 15 million views on Weibo (a microblogging platform), Geeiq reports. Air Jordan recently teamed up with Tencent’s immersive interactive space Super QQ Show to dress avatars and virtual homes with virtual goods.
Ridler notes that the Vogue China community seems to have more of an appetite and understanding of the relationship between technology and luxury, than his native Australia, which is “quite conservative in that regard”, he says, adding that most commissions in the past three years have come from relationships within China and the US. “For fashion, it’s a natural extension of what we create on set. It seems like the Vogue China community is more excited by ideas within this space.”
In September, Vogue China launched a video-first cover story for which digital artist Sølve Sundsbø captured China’s next generation of supermodels in a hybrid 3D-scanned and photographic tableau, designed to generate conversation on whether fashion imagery should use technologies such as digital art, 3D scanning and beyond; this led to total reads of the two “owned hashtags” for this issue reaching almost 27 million. On Wechat, a social media and messaging app, Vogue China has 3 million followers, according to data provided by Condé Nast.
“The formats and possibilities for creators are boundless and the barriers to entry are relatively low, so we see much greater diversity in thought,” Zhang says. “We’re excited to see how it continues to evolve as we discover more creatives around the globe.”
Additional reporting by Madeleine Schulz
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