The Transformative Touch of Augmented Reality in Fashion

The fashion industry is in for a rough 2025. Insights from McKinsey particularly point out that high inflation, combined with the rising demand for eco-friendly pieces, means consumers are becoming more price-sensitive and sustainability-minded. Because of this, non-luxury segments are expected to take the lead in driving growth, compared to 2024.

The solution to the current state of fashion? Change how people engage with it. By enhancing experiences, streamlining product discoveries and highlighting the care that goes into design and production, labels and retailers alike can stand out and increase their appeal. In fact, many in the industry are already doing so by using emerging technologies.

More specifically, they’re leveraging the transformative touch of augmented reality (AR), which allows them to digitally superimpose fashion’s alluring visual elements onto real-world settings. Here are three ways they’re using it to change the game:

Engaging virtual try-ons

Virtual try-ons are already popular in ecommerce, with some of the best themes for Shopify making it easier to see how products like furniture, which can be hard to assess remotely, will both fit their space and suit a buyer’s unique aesthetic tastes.

Given their success in these spheres, more and more fashion brands are using them to help people discover and fit personalized items like clothing, shoes, makeup and eyewear. For instance, virtual mirrors on websites like Glasses.com allow users to easily try on glasses online using sophisticated forms of AR.

The tool takes into account the consumer’s unique facial measurements to generate digital twins that realistically visualize how they would look wearing the glasses.

This more polished version of the virtual try-on makes it easier for online shoppers to explore products, especially in busy categories like eyewear. It shows how AR can enhance user experiences as they interact with fashion accessories in new and exciting ways, perfectly illustrating how AR’s transformative touch can improve the industry’s outcomes in the months ahead. 

Immersive fashion showcases

Fashion shows and exhibits are often an exclusive affair. However, they’re also the best way to experience fashion design as an art form. That’s why the industry is beginning to use AR to expand their appeal beyond luxury audiences.

Take the efforts of the Design Museum of London. Its 2023 exhibit, Rebel: 30 Years of London Fashion, stood out for providing virtual mirrors that allowed users to recreate the experience of trying on pieces backstage before a show (with different hair and makeup options, to boot), ultimately making the exhibit experience more meaningful for fashion enthusiasts and other museum visitors.

Another great example can be seen in the world’s first AR-powered fashion festival, WeAR. Launched in 2024, it boasted exhibits during fashion weeks at all of the world’s major style capitals, including New York, London, Paris, and Milan.

These exhibits consisted of geo-located digital activities, which allowed anyone passing by popular landmarks to whip out their phones and instantly join immersive yet avant-garde runway experiences.

Some of the festival’s major participants included luxury label Balmain and high-end accessory brand Pinko, highlighting how AR helped foster a deeper appreciation of fashion in the general public, something that can go a long way in bolstering the fashion industry’s luxury segment in 2025. 

Interactive sustainability displays

With over 59% of consumers in major markets like the US asking for more sustainability in fashion, the industry’s leading brands are using AR to help users see and believe in their eco-minded efforts to produce greener pieces.

In 2022, Doddz’s runway show DEFY: A Digital Fashion Show garnered praise from The Shorty Awards for debuting one of the world’s first AR screenwear collections. The main goal was to minimize the carbon emissions generated when producing and transporting garments and textiles across the globe in preparation for major fashion shows.

In a masterful display of “show, don’t tell,” popular footwear brand adidas went even further by going above and beyond with AR-powered gamification.

In its flagship Paris store, the label offered an engaging, gamified mobile AR experience that let visitors walk through and better appreciate the processes adidas uses to convert recyclable materials into shoes.

By clearly demonstrating how these pieces align with what consumers care about, all while being stylish and practical, the industry proves to shoppers that investing in quality and luxury items will still be worth it in 2025.