You want to be seen and discovered by being featured on IMVU. “It was the idea that it could be anything, and that people could have it right away, all over, rather than having to wait for production, for the stores.We get it. “I liked the idea of doing something digitally because I’ve never done it before,” she says. “I’m such a small brand, I don’t have the team to make everything that I want to make.” The Nigeria-born, London-based Mowalola Ogunlesi, who runs an eponymous line and is working with Kanye West on his new venture Yeezy Gap, emphasizes the accessibility of IMVU. “I’m not that connected to digital media-in my downtime, I want to go lay on a rock by a stream-but I do think it’s a way to create things,” she says. On IMVU, Taymour’s avatars will wear virtual versions of clothes she sells IRL, as well as more fantastical get-ups. “There’s a way to create a more educational model or expressive model, rather than just a product model,” Taymour told Vogue when, with an assist from Gucci, she produced a video game for pre-fall ’21 where the mission was fighting climate change. As an advocate for sustainability, Collina Strada’s Hillary Taymour was game to try her hand at virtual clothes. The designers on the IMVU lineup aren’t tech-heads necessarily, but they’re all rule-breakers in one way or another. But it’s another thing to have access to a brand before you’re actually going to invest in it in the real world, and that kind of accessibility, that’s just going to grow the reach of these brands.” And I also want to communicate to real-world brands that the metaverse is a place of mass audiences, where there’s a true opportunity for brand integration, for brand expansion, and for brand expression.” She continues: “It’s one thing to see an ad over and over. “I really want to see two things happen: I want to see people looking at fashion with a different lens-not just putting a dress on their avatar, but looking at Collina Strada or Mowalola’s offering and being a lot more creative about that expression. “This goes well beyond putting a logo on a digital t-shirt or ‘pixel pants,’ Aamodt says. The see-now, buy-now component makes it different from the Animal Crossing fashion show staged in May last year, when shutdown orders made live events an impossibility. When the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic started bringing musicians to digital platforms like IMVU, where they could create videos in the absence of real-world production, Aamodt had her brainwave. Users put on their own fashion shows, form virtual model agencies, and host award show ceremonies. “Every time there’s something major in pop culture or there’s a trend in fashion, it’s immediately on IMVU,” Aamodt confirms. “Part of that is because dressing up an avatar in a digital space gives people access to anything that they want to look like, and it’s hard to do that in the real world.” On the night of the 2019 Met Gala, for instance, there were virtual versions of celebrities’ campy red carpet looks up on IMVU before the cameras stopped flashing. “Fashion is at the epicenter of why people create avatars and connect with others on IMVU,” says Lindsay Anne Aamodt, the site’s senior director of marketing. I Shop Therefore I Am, as Barbara Kruger put it in her famous 1990 piece, takes on new resonance in this digital world. Fourteen billion in credits, or $14 million, exchanges hands over 27 million transactions each month. IMVU’s virtual store features 50 million items made by over 200,000 creators. The point of IMVU is to connect virtually with friends and to potentially make new ones, but shopping is no small part of the site’s attraction. If you aren’t one of those millions, here’s a primer: On IMVU, users create personal avatars and dress them in clothes designed by fellow users-creators, in site parlance-bought with credits paid for with real money. The online metaverse and social networking site IMVU grew by 44% during the pandemic it now attracts 7 million active users a month, most of them female or female-identifying and aged from 18 to 24.
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