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Karlie Kloss Launches Fashion Klossette, an Immersive Roblox World That Lets Users Experience the Fashion Industry

Karlie Kloss wants people from all walks of life to experience the fashion industry.

After launching pop-ups on Roblox last year, she will introduce Fashion Klossette, an immersive Roblox world that allows users to experience the fashion industry. Users can work their way up in the fashion world from intern to editor in chief by designing their own looks to showcase on the runway and in display galleries for other users to see, try on and buy.

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“It’s still in beta but we are just amazed that just over the weekend we’ve had 4.5 million visits. That’s completely word of mouth,” said Kloss, the 30-year-old model, entrepreneur and philanthropist, in an interview.

Rush Bogin, Roblox’s top digital fashion designer who’s a senior at Denver School of the Arts and is a design collaborator with Kloss, added, “There’s so much hype around this launch. People have been waiting for this for so long.”

Kloss — in partnership with Copper, a talent management and advisory firm, and alongside developer studio Sawhorse — has brought experts and digital fashion designers from Roblox together to build an experience that meets this demand with new technology and features. Some of the advances in Fashion Klossette include humanoid avatars, next generation graphics, customizable 3D Layered clothing, and a first-of-its-kind experience styling studio with makeup and clothing customization.

A view of Fashion Klossette.
A view of Fashion Klossette.

The studio, for example, allows users to select their avatar’s body, face shape, hairstyle and skin color, among other things. From there, Klossette’s fashion gurus can choose and customize the color and texture of clothing items, accessories and makeup to work with their personally designed studio and photo shoot set. With their mini creative campaign set up, users can also view and vote on other users’ looks and shop a curated collection.

“The real thesis behind what we’re trying to create here is democratizing access to the best of fashion. Roblox is this incredible platform that has 60-plus million daily active users, which far exceeds any other space in the metaverse. The community on Roblox is incredibly social and collaborative and is also an individual experience, and you hang out with your friends in different games,” said Kloss, whose aim is to give creatives more tools and outlets for their ideas.

The Runway in Fashion Klossette.
The Runway in Fashion Klossette.

“Digital fashion is transforming how people design, style and share those creations with other people in an increasingly online world. Klossette is a perfect expansion and outlet for that. I am so proud to be able to offer people a platform to experiment with fashion and design as part of a community of like-minded creators,” said Kloss. She believes that “the possibilities are endless,” in a digital space where opportunities for experimentation, collaboration and exposure are abundant for talented new designers and those who are passionate about fashion.

Last year Kloss introduced Fashion Klossette Designer Showcase, and the new game is an evolution of what it did originally. “It’s very different from anything else on the Roblox platform. I wanted to distill from my 15 years of fashion the best of what I’ve been able to experience, walking in runway shows in the Grand Palais [in Paris] for many years and working with stylists, designers, makeup artists, hair stylists, set designers — all facets of the creative jobs that really go into making the magic possible.”

When the pop-ups were originally done over the summer, she worked with five top Roblox creators. She gave them inspiration and the theme, and let them run free. “We put the pop-up in five of the top games, so it was a like a hub as two-week pop-ups. It was very successful, we had a lot of people engage and we learned a lot. We learned how much appetite there is for fashion on the platform,” said Kloss.

She said the fastest-growing demographic on Roblox is 17- to 24-year-olds. “There are billions done in transactions on the platform,” said Kloss. “That’s one thing from the start that’s been really interesting; it’s realizing the real commercial potential of designing fashion on Roblox,” she said. Since the pop-ups, items continue to be released on the platform.

For example, a version of the dress that Kloss wore on Carolina Herrera’s runway was sold on the platform for people to buy for their avatars. It was only available for a few hours and people bought it for 500 Robux, which is equivalent to $5. It’s been trading on the platform for up to 1 million Robux.

The new game was inspired by the Grand Palais.

The way Fashion Klossette works is, users can design their own outfits, style the hair and makeup and accessorize their looks. Klossette has curated all the items into a catalog with the Klossette lens. If somebody buys an item in the game, the original designer gets a cut of that. Asked how Kloss makes money on it, she said, “Our game is monetized by how much time is spent, and we get a cut of transactions on the platform.” She also said there are ways for users to win items. “Winning free items is something that’s very popular,” she said.

She said users can go to the styling station and they can design on their avatar or create on a model. The game offers choices of clothing, beauty, makeup and hair “that’s in a league of their own,” said Kloss. Users can choose the eye color, the lips, and eyebrow shape. They can pick their pose and send it to the styling station. “This is very high tech,” she said.

Once the user customizes their full look, they can head to their photoshoot and runway, while completing quests along the way. Once they complete quests, they vote on looks and follow their friends and earn Klossette coins, which helps them scale the fashion ranks starting from intern all the way up to fashion icon.

“What we wanted to do is to create maximum options [for users] to express themselves however they wanted. There’s no limitation on gender, body shape, size, skin tone; we wanted to create as many options as possible,” she said. She said she wanted to create a space that can be inclusive and accessible. The users can publish their galleries, and everyone can walk and see if they like it, or try it on or buy it. There are design competitions, and users get coins for all the different actions.

“That’s what so exciting about digital fashion. Really anything is possible,” said Kloss. “You don’t have to be in Paris to experience this, you can have any budget, and there’s no limitations. You can have blue skin or you can have a dress on fire. That’s what’s exciting to me creatively. It’s a living, breathing eco-system that we’re going to continue to iterate on.”

Kloss sees the physical and digital world influencing each other.

“We believe this game is a bridge between the best of digital fashion and influenced by the physical fashion industry. Our plans over the years to come are to continue to create experiences in the game to reflect what’s happening in the physical fashion industry in live experiences and bridging these two worlds, and vice versa. There’s so much for physical fashion industry to learn from what’s happening in this next generation and what they’re excited about and how they’re thinking about their identity,” said Kloss.

Kloss cited some statistics backing up the intense interest from Roblox users. In 2022, 25 million virtual items were created by the Roblox community. More than 5.8 billion items were purchased last year on Roblox. Three in four people on the platform said they’ll spend money on digital fashion. Thirty percent spend $10 to $20 each month, and 12 percent spend $50 to $100 each month, said Kloss.

Further, self-expression is a big priority for many of Roblox’s 67 million-plus daily users [as of February 2023]. Two in five Gen Z users active on Roblox said expressing themselves with clothing and accessories in the digital world is more important than doing it in the physical world. Users have also said that dressing their avatars allows them to showcase their individuality (47 percent) and feel good about themselves (43 percent), in addition to feeling more connected to peers. According to Roblox, 40 percent of those monthly users update their avatars once a month and 18 percent of users update theirs every day, according to data from 2022 Metaverse Fashion Trends’ Report.

There’s a close to 50/50 split of women to men who are gamers on Roblox. “A lot of the offerings in gaming are shooting games, and are not necessarily as creative. We wanted to create an offering that can unlock imagination in a space where so many young women are,” said Kloss.

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