Tommy Hilfiger on AI and his new fashion game

Tommy Hilfiger, through his investment firm Hilfiger Ventures, has created his own fashion styling game targeted at millennial and older Gen Z fashion consumers. It’s the first mobile game to launch using generative AI that enhances 3D looks — meaning the graphics are a step up from what’s currently on the market.

The free-to-play game, called FashionVerse, is a standalone app that will enable people to style life-like avatars with realistic-looking, three-dimensional outfits. Players can compete and vote in styling and mood board challenges, and pay to acquire additional pieces or win rewards to receive more fashion in the game.

“I really believe that video games will be another retail platform in the future,” Hilfiger says. The fashion icon invited Vogue Business to his Palm Beach residence last week to preview the game, which is set to launch globally on 16 January. “With e-sports and video games that have already come out, there’s evidence of that. The amount of shopping that goes on during gameplay is, I would say, incredible.”

For both fashion brands and traditional fashion consumers, the compromise on graphics that typically appear in mobile gaming has been a turn-off. To reach fashion, the aesthetics still required an upgrade, Hilfiger says. “People who play sports on mobile usually are not as particular about the visuals because they’re more interested in the competition,” he notes, “while this gamer will want to see real fashion. It has to be elevated because they want to be inspired by it.”

Recent developments in generative AI act almost as a “filter” that enhances details such as realistic fabric textures and shadows. “In the very beginning of the development, the avatars were a bit juvenile,” Hilfiger admits. “It was our motive to make it more sophisticated and elevated. AI basically did that for us overnight. It was a game changer for us,” he says with a laugh. “No pun intended.” Another key detail is that the avatars represent a wide range of sizes, ethnicities and abilities. (More images are below.)

The app was designed by developer studio Brandible Games, which uses a proprietary AI model to enhance its photorealism, and published by Tilting Point (publishers are typically responsible for monetising games). To begin with, FashionVerse will use generic clothing designed by the in-house Brandible team and inspired by current trends or pop culture moments. Going forward, partnerships with fashion, entertainment, art and beauty brands will enable branded “pop-ups” in which players are invited to buy and style pieces that are digitised replicas of physical products. These pop-ups will include challenges based on brand campaigns and digital exclusives from artists and musicians.

Brandible chief business officer Caitlin Shell, who is also business development director at Tilting Point, previously worked at games including Covet Fashion and Drest. She says the aim was to strike a balance between keeping FashionVerse “playful, yet fashion”. “At the end of the day, it has to be fun. There are some games that are super gamey and not quite ‘fashion’ enough for my taste, or there are some games that are very beautiful in fashion, but they’re actually not super successful because they don’t have that stickiness — they don’t give that dopamine hit that you get when you win. [It] is actually quite a hard balance to strike.”

Gaming’s big promise for brands

Gaming is big business: gaming revenue is expected to reach up to $665 billion by 2030 (up from $200 billion in 2022); much of that is due to in-game purchases. In 2021, three-quarters of gaming revenue went to in-game purchases of virtual goods. In 2023, 62 per cent of adults in the US play video games, and 76 per cent of kids. Shell says that many people who don’t consciously define themselves as “gamers” still play some type of game.

Elements of gaming have been expanding beyond traditional video games, bleeding into metaverse worlds, social media and e-commerce. For fashion brands, gaming is a way to broaden revenue streams and tap into younger consumers. The opportunity is often centred around the notion that players express themselves through their avatars and — because they socialise in these worlds — are keen to pay to upgrade their appearances.

A fashion styling game adopts a slightly different angle, hoping to appeal to more traditional fashion consumers. An estimated 46 per cent of US gamers are women, with the average age of US gamers being 32. As gamers grow older, and gaming bleeds into consumers’ digital experiences, that opportunity is likely only to grow.

Fashion styling game app Drest, founded by former Porter magazine editor Lucy Yeomans, launched in 2019 with an aim to tap into the fashion consumer; it has landed partnerships with Gucci, Prada and Burberry. Drest is currently preparing for an imminent relaunch, Yeomans recently told Vogue Business, including rebuilding its entire tech stack. Covet Fashion and Pocket Styler are additional popular standalone styling apps; Pocket Styler boasts 21 million downloads and a new “Studio” platform to enable players to design their own fashion for the app. Roblox also has a number of fashion styling games. Karlie Kloss’s new Fashion Klossette invites Roblox players to style fashion photoshoots and has received more than 27 million visits since it launched in March, according to the Geeiq dashboard.

Still, fashion fans remain “incredibly underserved” in the games space, says Tilting Point founder and CEO Kevin Segalla. “When Tommy approached us with the FashionVerse idea, we knew immediately this was a huge opportunity we couldn’t pass up.” Hilfiger Ventures is a private investment firm founded by Hilfiger and Joe Lamastra (who is also the founding managing partner at Sandbridge Capital, which has invested in Thom Browne, The RealReal, Ilia and Henry Rose). It primarily focuses on media and entertainment — companies that are not directly linked to fashion, Hilfiger says.

The game will launch not just in Google Play and Apple’s App Store, but also in the Netflix app, for immediate availability to Netflix’s more than 247 million members (using the same recommendation engine as it does for video).

FashionVerse has found early success testing in Southeast Asia, Germany and Italy, where it ranked in the top 10, beating Roblox. The median age of players is 30, and they spend on average about 23 minutes a day, cumulatively, in the FashionVerse app, Shell says.

The team is still considering how and if it would incorporate commerce into FashionVerse, meaning the ability to buy the physical corresponding twins of in-game looks, Shell says. Drest, for example, already offers this, and Roblox says that it will be introducing this capability by 2025. For now, Shell says, most commerce integrations have been limited to features that invite players to click out to e-commerce product pages, which could result in lower engagement and decreased time spent.

These types of partnerships would be free to begin, but going forward, FashionVerse will explore monetising them, Shell says. While the game can feature apparel that has already been digitised using 3D tools (such as CLo3d or Marvelous Designer), FashionVerse can also do it for them. (Companies such as PVH, which owns the Tommy Hilfiger brand, are the rare exception in terms of fashion brands with an already robust 3D workflow.)

In discussions with industry peers, Hilfiger says that reactions have been mixed. The early adopters get it, he says, while sceptics are par for the course. “Most people are very intrigued, and a lot of people who are advanced in their thinking absolutely love it. But there are some people who are a little hesitant. People who are innovative and who are out in front of the curve embracing the culture and creating great creative marketing content really get it.”

Hilfiger says he also sees a future in which players are invited to create user-generated content, meaning design their own clothes to use within the app; already, this type of content has performed well on Roblox. “I really believe that most people who are interested in fashion will want to design their own clothes and they'll be able to do it with AI and within a video game.”

For now, becoming as addictive as Instagram or TikTok will do. “Mobile games are really going to be the future,” he says. “Think about the amount of students in between class on public transportation and people just staying up late at night playing because they become so immersed in it — like so many people are so immersed in Instagram and TikTok and keep going and going and going. It has those qualities of drawing people in.”