Playing Dress Up as a Virtual Stylist
My virtual self likes to pile on the accessories but I kept her from going overboard.
Visual search engine site Like.com recently launched Couturious, a site where users get to play stylist and dress up virtual avatars.
Couturious operates much like similar dress-up site Looklet.com, which launched last year.
Couturious offers outfit resources from nearly 300 brands, including featured designers Alice + Olivia, Charlotte Ronson, Cynthia Rowley, Tibi and Yigal Azrouel. I noticed a well-represented West Coast contingent of L.A. labels such as Sue Wong, Kill City, Fremont, Grai and Mike Chris.
Users can select from a variety of model types, shapes and sizes. Not only can users create a look for their avatar but even go as far as piling on the layers, tucking in each shirt or unbuttoning top buttons on a shirt. Most pieces can then be shopped for directly from the designer’s e-tail site or a partnered site such as Zappos.com.
User can also share finished looks on social-networking sites Facebook and Twitter.
With Couturious, Like.com is further expanding its reach into the digital fashion world—already owning shopping site Covet.com and recently acquiring social street style site Weardrobe.
If sites like Couturious and Looklet are paving the way for the future of online shopping and even shopping in general, I imagine a “Surrogates”-type world where we won’t even leave the house but instead send out modelesque avatars—albeit impeccably dressed versions of ourselves, of course.
But maybe I’m getting a little ahead of myself, and that’s in the far, far distant future. For now, it’s just fun to play dress up.
