Bally announces winners of Fashion Innovation Award, virtual fashion edition

Luxury brand Bally, in partnership with The Lifestyle-Tech Competence Centre, has announced the winners of the 2021 Fashion Innovation Award, virtual fashion edition. Scale-ups and innovative B2B/B2B2C service providers were asked to apply to the awards, which focused on virtual fashion and augmented customer experience.

The winner of the Virtual Fashion Category was announced as OppenFuture Technologies, a China-based 3D and augmented reality (AR) technology firm, providing 3D interactions and AR try-on features for e-commerce. Applicants for the category were scouted on virtual solutions in the areas of 3D fashion design, virtual apparel, fashion NFTs, avatars, fashion metaverse and gaming. Those shortlisted for the award included the likes of Dutch company The Fabricant, a digital fashion house, and metaverse social platform, Anam XR.

US company, Obsess, won the Augmented Customer Experience Category, for its ability to enable international luxury brands to serve interactive and creative digital shopping experiences, using virtual reality (VR) technology for stores and showrooms. Category selections were directed towards the technology fields surrounding virtual try-ons and stores, customer journey virtualisation, e-commerce improvements, phygital stores and more. UK-based virtual shopping platform, Klarna, and SmartPixels, a 3D visualisation platform, were among the shortlist.

100 applicants from across Europe, Asia and North America were presented to the jury, which consisted of Bally’s top management and representatives of the competition’s partners, including Accenture, Microsoft and USB. Finalists presented at a decisive pitch day at Bally’s headquarters in Switzerland.

Winners of the competition will get the opportunity to work on a proof-of-concept project with the Swiss label next year.