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Virtual mirrors
New technology allows a mirror to send a live video feed to friends cellphones, allowing a shopper to get instant feedback on clothes. Samira Nanda reports.
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“Mirror, mirror on the wall, does this jacket make me look good, bad, fat or tall?”
A New York-based design company has come up with a mirror equipped with infrared technology that sends a live video signal to any cell phone, email account or digital device selected by the shopper. This means a woman trying on a wedding dress in New York City could get immediate feedback from her mother who may be holidaying all the way (adv.自始至终, 一路上) in Paris, France.
Placing these mirrors outside store fitting rooms means women could go shopping with their friends remotely. Using the interactive mirror, a shopper’s friends can text message back with comments about the outfit. The messages then appear on the mirror screen and the response is quantified so the shopper sees how many nays and yeas she gets from a particular outfit.
Rachael McBrearty, the V.P.(Vice President) of Creative Strategy for IconNicholson, the company that created the technology explains the philosophy.
“When the customer walks into the store, err, they get changed in the dressing room and step out instead of asking their girlfriends ‘Hey, how do I look’. They can step in front of the mirror and ask the world what they, you know, what they think. They can get ratings,some, just a click, you know, do they look good, do they look bad? Look at thumbs up or a thumbs down. Um, they can also get suggestions from their, the people online of what other things might look good on them, um, as well as text messages telling them exactly how they look.”
Another interesting function of the mirror is that shoppers can also use touch screens on the three-paneled mirror to choose matching shoes or accessories. The left-hand panel has a touch screen that allows a customer to select a different outfit from a database, and then see how it looks on her in the center mirror. The right-hand panel has a screen offering more information about other shoes or accessories that shopper also might like.
Christopher Enright, chief technology officer for IconNicholson said the interactive retail mirror is a natural retail development born of a network world with a use especially easy in constant contact with each other.
People are using social networking to talk to each other, to share opinions, to..to have, you know, virtual interactions whether positive or negative or however works out. This is the, the area that people discuss and have forums today. So, building on that, that trend that we have now, especially 2005, 2006. Um..it really allows the retailer to take advantage of this connection and use all of these things—video like a YouTube,IMing (instant messaging 也作IM) like we all know AOL and MSN so on and so forth. Um, and all of the different communication platforms to really get opinions of people.
While the interactive retail mirror was developed for the New York fashion designer Nanette Lepore's boutiques(n.专卖时尚服装的小店), IconNicholson say the technology will soon spread to major retailers and department stores.
Samira Nanda, Reuters, New York.
