Fashion and art made big strides with integrating their brands with VR in 2021, promoting interactivity and bringing a new complexity of engagement to their customers. The two industries are naturally creative and VR gives them the capability to expand on their inventive ideals and deliver all new emotional experiences.
In this guide, we’ve put together some of the most innovative virtual reality projects in art and fashion that occurred last year, celebrating their achievements while also looking forward to what VR can do for them in the future.
1. The V&A Curious Alice Exhibition
In 2021’s summer months, the Victoria & Albert museum in London put on a virtual exhibition celebrating the life and works of Lewis Caroll with a particular emphasis on his Alice in Wonderland stories.
The exhibition provides a playful and colourful insight into Caroll’s works and the various adaptations that have blossomed from the original work over the centuries. It was part of a larger exhibition called Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser and allowed visitors an in-depth imaginative exploration of a charming and classic work.
Interactivity was the biggest element of the VR exhibition, with activities like solving riddles, defeating the Queen of Hearts at croquet and catching the White Rabbit’s glove. The exhibition can be viewed from the comfort of your own home through VIVEPORT for only £4 and visitors to the gallery can experience a shorter version of the VR experience through headsets.
2. Prada Spring/Summer 2021 Womenswear Show
Luxury fashion house Prada put their own mark on VR for their fashion shows last year, creating an intimate and stylish space for visitors to view their clothes, offering an intensive close-up look of the art of fashion.
A debut cast of models parade a high-tech space, adorned in simple, classic beige colours, in a display of modern intimacy and sensuality complete with a synthetic style soundmix and camera chandeliers.
Prada’s development of a full three-dimensional experience proves how fashion is a high form of art if cultivated carefully, sending a powerful message through the use of VR and using technology to enhance the meaning and symbolism of their fashion ideals.
3. The Garden of Privatised Delights
V21 Artspace’s exhibition The Garden of Privatised Delights is an expansive, in-depth virtual gallery exploring the privatisation of public space in regards to architecture and design.
Several teams united to create a host of rooms for visitors to explore from a pub to a playground to the high street. Each room served to engage the audience in a debate about the accessibility of public spaces to the people, asking questions on whether garden squares could be opened up to provide more public space and whether new spaces could be installed or carved out in cities for teenagers to spend their time.
The exhibition uses VR to encourage visitors to imagine a world where public spaces and society are freer and more closely connected with the aim of revitalising public life and making public spaces for everyone again instead of being private.
4. Nerdy Gangsta Inc. Augmented Reality Exhibition
Detroit-based streetwear fashion brand, Nerdy Gangsta Inc, took part in Fashion Week in 2021, bringing with them a state-of-the-art AR experience to improve their image and increase engagement with their products.
Their bold and fearless idealisms translated well into their virtual venture. Visitors would use their phones to enter Nerdy Gangsta’s AR space, scan their surroundings from side to side and the technology would then imprint the models in full size into the physical space becoming available for interaction such as walking around them for a three-dimensional view and taking pictures.
This presents a new way for Nerdy Gangsta Inc to help their audience along the journey of discovery, modernising their brand with fast loading speeds helping to make their exhibition as engaging and immersive as possible.
5. Celebrating Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio, better known as Raphael, was one of the most celebrated painters of renaissance Italy and for the 500th anniversary of his death, a virtual museum was put together to pay homage to his broad and varied artworks, painting a rich atmosphere sure to entrance any Renaissance enthusiast.
Paintings were digitally uploaded from galleries all over the world, bringing together the most intensive collection of Raphael pieces in the world. Artworks can be browsed to your heart’s content and when a piece catches your eye you can click on it to find out more information, making the exhibition an historical treasure trove of facts to enhance the paintings.
The Celebrating Raphael exhibition is a must-see for art fans everywhere, creating a simple yet immersive experience that can keep audiences engaged for hours on end.
6. Sensing the Unseen: At Home
In celebration of Gossaert’s masterpiece, ‘The Adoration of the Kings’, National Gallery launched an exclusive AR mobile experience designed to get users up and close and personal with the exquisite painting.
With six scenes for users to peruse and enchanting background music to set the mood, the worldwide interactive exhibit offers a brand new perspective sure to enthrall any art enthusiast and provide a once in a lifetime opportunity.
The experience is completed with a reading of six short exclusive poems are read, supporting the painted scenes and bringing the painting to life and creating a whole new layer of immersion for the users. All they had to do was access the experience through their android or iPhone and the world of Gossaert was at their fingertips.
7. Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience
An ongoing show since March 2021, the Van Gogh show makes the famous artist’s paintings among the most engaging in the world by offering visitors the chance to step inside the paintings.
The exhibition combines 360 degree projections in large open rooms so that visitors can see Van Gogh’s artwork all around them, 15,000 square foot screens that allow the paintings to become vibrant and larger than life and then top the experience off with a VR element that takes users on a short but fulfilling journey through a day in the life of Vincent Van Gogh, taking them through the creation process of some his most iconic masterpieces.
The experience takes visitors on a journey of discovery that brings them closer than ever to one of the world’s most prolific artists, delivering on its promise of immersion by combining the physical and digital worlds to create a whole new artistic vision.
Art and fashion have been inspiring and exciting audiences since time immemorial and the rise of VR has provided the next step in artistic immersion, allowing for more breadth of creativity and providing customers with new experiences.
The union of fashion and art with VR can only get stronger from here with the continuation of the immersive Van Gogh experience through to May as well as Philip Noyed’s VR art exhibition, the Neo Art Space. The future of art and fashion is now and they are both becoming virtual marvels.
