Yahoo, the global media and tech company that reaches nearly 900 million people around the world, partnered with Maisie Schloss, Gen Z fashion prodigy and apprentice to Kanye West, and her label, Maisie Wilen, to present her Fall-Winter 2022 collection to the fashion industry as a digital-first immersive experience at New York Fashion Week (NYFW). Yahoo’s vision for NYFW was to design a digital shopping experience that spoke to the next generation of fashion fans whose wardrobe is made for both the digital and real world, understanding that Gen Z is highly into fashion and curious about the metaverse.

Yahoo co-created and conceptualized the experience with Maisie Wilen using cutting-edge volumetric capture technology powered by Yahoo to build a live and larger-than-life holographic experience. Guests were fully immersed in an experience that melded the virtual and physical worlds of fashion in a way never done before. Using 7ft tall holographic models inspired by the Monster High doll franchise, the surreal looks were purely digital, in a real-life setting. The holograms played and interacted with curated sound effects, distorting space and form that challenged the senses. NYFW’s first-ever holographic fashion show offered a new way to explore the artist’s collections and demonstrated how Yahoo can provide the technology and innovation to build the bridge between the fashion industry and the metaverse.

This first of its kind experience was made possible by conducting a multiformat shoot that would allow the assets to be interchangeable within a live, digital and social environment. Following the live collection debut at New York Fashion Week, the holographic assets lived on as a fun and interactive shopping experience through augmented reality (AR), on a website specially created by Yahoo for the project. Using WebAR and a QR code, users could virtually explore the clothing from all angles and see the pieces in their home environment, purchasing them with a click on the first GIF lookbook, specifically created for Gen Z consumers in mind. Users were also able to see the collection on virtual models inspired by characters like Clawdeen Wolf, who came to life with fun bat visuals flying around her, and Draculaura, who emitted electric shockwave visual effects.

To create the larger-than-life holograms and AR imaging for the show, Yahoo set up 106 cameras in a studio, capturing the models with 360° imaging in super sharp 6K resolution. Viewers saw the clothing’s every stitch and detail. Schloss was able to execute her vision thanks to cutting-edge, volumetric capture technology powered by Yahoo. The experiences were published with Yahoo Immersive, the largest extended reality (XR) platform for creating augmented, mixed and virtual reality advertising and branded content with an emphasis on scalable, next-generation experiences. Yahoo’s vision for NYFW continues to be to design a digital experience that speaks to the next generation of fans. The pandemic has increased the desire for both digital and physical engagement and Yahoo’s industry-leading technology and creativity helped Schloss reimagine the consumer journey for her fans by immersing them in the collection, deepening that connection with an experience that felt fun and cutting edge.

The ecommerce website has had one of the highest engagement rates in Yahoo’s ecosystem this year, with an average time spent on the site of 3.2 minutes, around 6 times above average for this content format. Users also spent longer exploring the holograms themselves at 4.1 minutes average dwell time and users actively engaging with and manipulating the holograms.

Yahoo also engaged social media influencers in order to drive the Gen Z narrative; and 100% of them organically posted to their Instagram stories, which was not a part of their negotiated agreement, proving genuine interest in the campaign. The engagement rate doubled predictions based on internal benchmarks. There were 274.24K views, 38.3K likes and comments and 1.1K clicks. The engagement rate was 12.8% and overall reach totaled nearly 3M followers.