Augmented reality fashion platform Zero10 turned to Crosby Studios to create a pop-up for digital clothing sales in NYC’s SoHo neighbourhood.

Key features

To be open from 7 to 18 September, the pop-up store is treated like a physical ‘entrance to the metaverse’. Within the retail environment – which takes on pixelated cladding, lime-green lighting and metallic finishes – one is consumer to five digital fashion pieces, also designed by Crosby Studios. The Zero10-developed products are ‘tried on’ with an iPhone – either your own or the store’s – equipped with the company’s proprietary AR technology. Inside the privacy of a fitting room, customers scan QR codes that link to Zero10’s app, where the collection lives. The digital clothing – sold as NFTs – can then be modelled in real time or fashioned on an uploaded picture.

The unconventional sales experience means the designers were able to ditch typical retail outfitting, including cash wraps, decorative furniture and clothing racks. Instead, the spatial design focuses on fostering interaction, content creation and technological exploration. ‘We wanted to create a new concept of pop-up space responding to retailers' needs to attract a new generation of consumers but also evolving the format of pop-ups that are not about product display any longer,’ says Zero10 CEO George Yashin. ‘As Zero10 is a part of digital fashion, this space with AR technology integrated into it is aimed to combine metaverse experience with a focus on creation and interaction by bringing it to the physical world to make it more mainstream.'

Frame’s take 

We’re in the figurative Wild West of retail for digital-only products. A physical space dedicated to a product that only exists on a screen may seem counterintuitive, but now is the time to experiment with what modalities are actually successful for this new type of consumption. Yashin’s words – and the execution of the Zero10 pop-up – speak to the necessity for new concepts, and the sustained relevance of bricks-and-mortar retail in digital commerce. Crosby Studios’ characteristic visual aesthetic works particularly well for garnering interest and foot traffic in Zero10’s brand space, perhaps incentivizing even reluctant NFT buyers to give patronizing the market a go.