Gucci Debuts AR Try-On Lens With Snapchat

Need to Know

• Gucci is the first brand-name partnership for Snapchat’s try-on tool Lenses which was unveiled last month.
• Four styles of footwear will be offered at first, which will be paired with a “buy now” option.
• Gucci and Snapchat have partnered before on a limited-edition pair of Snapchat Spectacles.

Analysis

Less than a month after Snapchat revealed Lenses, its augmented-reality try-on tool, Gucci has become the first brand to sponsor the tool.

Gucci will launch two Lenses with Snapchat, each of which will showcase four of the brand’s shoe styles: Gucci Ace, Gucci Rhyton, Gucci Tennis 1977 and Gucci Screener. Users can access the tool within Snapchat; they then point their smartphone lens at their feet in order to virtually “try on” a pair of shoes. Lenses are also shoppable, meaning that, if users like what they see, they can click a “buy now” button to purchase a pair of shoes from directly within the app.

“With the Shoe Try-on, it is really about enabling Snapchatters to feel and shop Gucci’s latest sneaker collections,” Geoffrey Perez, global head of luxury at Snap, said in an interview with Womenswear Daily. “We’re going a step further into the marketing funnel down to consideration and conversion — this is the future of social commerce.”

The partnership is not the first for Gucci and Snapchat: the luxury fashion brand sponsored a pair of Snapchat Spectacles, the company’s wearable, in December of last year, and Gucci worked with Snapchat on a special Lens in honour of the Met Gala last summer.

Fashion and cosmetics brands have been increasingly embracing augmented-reality try-on tools lately — and there has been a notable uptick in the use of the tech in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. In May, online fashion retailer ASOS launched an AR fitting tool that allows customers to see how clothing fits on several differently sized models, in an effort to curb returns. And earlier this year, Pinterest launched a try-on tool that allowed users to try on lipsticks from Estée Lauder, Sephora, bareMinerals, Neutrogena, and L’Oreal brands NYX Professional Makeup, YSL Beauté, Lancôme, and Urban Decay; L’Oreal announced its own AR partnership with Canadian firm ModiFace, available via Amazon, last month.