When Lucy Yeomans was Editor-in-Chief of Harper’s Bazaar UK in the early aughts, she had the idea for an innovative luxury fashion styling game. After all, friends of hers whom she respected were tending to farms and rearing sheep thanks to apps like FarmVille. Wouldn’t they also play with jackets, and jumpsuits, and jewelry, she figured? Fast forward to October 2019—after a seven-year run as the Global Content Director of Net-a-Porter—Yeomans finally launched her virtual vision, Drest, to the world. Since then, the app has teamed up with a wide range of luxury labels, including Gucci, as well as added a host of CGI-ed supermodels (Natalia Vodianova and Irina Shayk, to name a few) to its 3D avatar lineup, but perhaps its most exciting collaboration yet launches today: an interactive partnership with Prada that allows users—known as stylists—to get creative with the Italian house’s Spring 2021 collection, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’ much anticipated first collaboration as co-creative directors.
“I remember once I was visiting [Miuccia Prada] in her office and she said to me, ‘Anyone can be creative but to be a real genius is to be creative and commercial,’ and it always stuck with me,” recalls Yeomans, who has been working hand-in-hand with the Prada team on bespoke props and stark backgrounds, not unlike those one would find on a real Prada set. (Pulling text from the brand’s dialogue-inspired campaign, one such display asks, “Do you ever feel like a machine?”)
A unique Prada photoshoot and Mood Board challenge, meanwhile, will be live in-game for 72 hours. “I think it’s one of our first almost wholly monochromatic challenges that we’ve done,” Yeomans says with a laugh of the “very style-able” 23-piece edit, which includes a lot of black, white, and grey ready-to-wear—and, of course, the season’s star Cleo shoulder bag. “For those who want to get closer to the brand—and can now feel like they can have agency pulling it all together—it’s like a dream come true,” she continues.
For others, the virtual experience is also an opportunity to test out which Prada purchases to make IRL (and without even leaving the Drest app). “There’s always one thing that I have to have [from Prada’s collections],” says Yeomans, who is quick to share that she has her eye on a grey wool cut-out sweater and a pair of kitten-heel slingbacks, which are available in both rose and ivory. “I’ll probably game with pink and buy the white,” she notes, pausing. “What’s amazing about playing this game is, because it’s virtual, you can be more daring… [Within the app] I find myself going again and again for that pink pair of slingbacks. One day I know that I’ll be like, ‘Actually, you know what? I need the pink slingbacks because I can see what they’re doing to my outfit….'” And then, just like that, she’s sold: “So I’m going to say the grey top and the pink slingbacks.”
