As a constant window shopper and borderline spending addict (the right piece is priceless, right?) I enjoy every part of hunting down the next great addition to my wardrobe. From store displays, to the textures and folds of garments, to the colours and smells (both new and old) of items beckoning with possibility… it never gets old. But, all of this built-up lust has the potential to immediately evaporate the second you step into an ill-fitting pair of jeans, and we all know numerous people who avoid shopping for this very reason.Online shopping is great for the person who can’t stand lines, crowds of people, or doesn’t mind waiting a few days for their fix, but how many times have you bought something on the internet that either looks vastly different from its picture online, or just plain doesn’t fit? Even the most adept shopper knows that their sizes can range all over the board depending on the retailer, and shipping something back and waiting 5-7 more business days just doesn’t seem worth it to me.Countless “virtual dressing rooms” have slightly helped address this problem, but punching in your measurements or uploading a picture of your face to view on a 2D screen (even if you get a 3D display), doesn’t quite do the trick. No matter how good looking it is, your avatar will not embody your body.When the Kinect video game console came along, it changed the way people game, hack, exercise, make artwork, record video footage, and now… it’s changing the way you try on clothes.Moscow’s flagship Topshop store recently teamed up with local augmented reality developer AR Door, to bring a virtual dressing room onto the physical floor of their store. The innovative “mirror” enabled shoppers to try on their latest line of dresses with a wave of their hand, while the Kinect’s motion-tracking technology superimposed the clothes onto their bodies, even rotating on shopper’s reflections as they turned and posed in front of the station.While it’s unclear if the Kinect can gauge your proper size (not to mention present the selected items at the register for you), the adaptation of the Kinect in this situation opens up a whole new world of never having to undress to try on clothes again. Though the innovation still feels “cold” (as in, not feeling the material against your bare skin), this “real life” virtual dressing room gives you the best of both worlds: the physical experience of shopping (that rush, that glorious high), combined with the ease of point-and-click internet purchasing.
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