Virtual Shopping

FROM SHOES to houses, you can now buy everything you want and need from the Internet. The rise of Internet shopping over the past ten years is unfathomed. Some 24 million UK consumers shopped online in 2005, spending a record £21.4 billion. This figure is only set to rise, as the virtual world of Internet shopping becomes an ever-popular trend particularly for fashion followers.

Long gone are the days of girls meeting in Sex and the City style, enjoying a full day of retail therapy whilst discussing their lives and loves. Now, it seems sites such as asos.com and net-a-porter.com have taken over from retail stores offering trends, blogs and labels ranging from their own brands to high fashion brands such as Karl Lagerfeld. Here, shoppers can explore the fashion world via their computer 24 hours a day. No long queues, no busy claustrophobic stores. Instead you are able to buy at the click of a button receiving your purchase as soon as the next morning. 

However, is this rise of the virtual store inflicting on the true values of fashion? How long is it until all of our shopping becomes a virtual experience instead of a real life one? What is the human cost of this trend toward Internet shopping? Traditionally the idea of the fashion shopping experience was an entirely sensory one. It was the touch, smell and sight of the clothes that provided a stimulant, along with the store atmospherics; music, lighting, layout and products themselves enticed the consumer into the store and added to the excitement of the shopping experience. Now, people prefer shopping to be a less social, less intimate and what could be considered an isolated experience.

This new virtual way of shopping is possibly a reflection of a society that is becoming less and less sociable, with real life human interaction no longer a necessity for self-fulfilment. Instead people are recreating and redesigning themselves to the person they would most like to be, their ideal self perhaps, with websites such as ‘Second Life’ providing such an opportunity.

Here, consumers create what is known as an ‘Avatar’ representing themselves and take part in an interactive 3D world with others from all over the globe. In this virtual world that so many take such pleasure in being a part of (1,525,670 unique people have logged into Second life at least once) people are able to carry out activities that parallel to real life such as marriage, sex and of course shopping.

With this newfound trend of shopping for your ideal self, designers including the likes of high fashion icon Armani have jumped on the bandwagon cashing in on this new online marketplace by opening their very own Second Life store. This move could pave the way for many other fashion retailers, moving society further and further toward a virtual life and further away from a here and now, real and tangible existence.