Take an In-Depth Squint At Gen Z’s Avatar Style Preferences
Missed our virtual panel “What’s Next in Metaverse Fashion?” Check out the recording here.
Long surpassing the vast potential of digital malleate captured the sustentation of media and brands, our polity members were designing, sharing, and wearing their own avatar malleate creations. For over a decade they’ve been redefining digital identity and their personal style, but in the past few years we’ve seen incredible leaps in the incubation of self-expression on our platform.
Iconic malleate brands have established presences here on Roblox by partnering with our creator community, and the rollout of Layered Clothing – our new technology powering hyper-realistic 3D suit – has once then raised the bar for what our creators are worldly-wise to make. As the opportunities for self-expression and personal style accelerate, we decided to take a moment to connect with our incredible polity and get a deeper understanding of their wits with digital fashion. We conducted wide-stretching research, drawing both from our own platform as well as survey responses¹ from a thousand Gen Z members who are zippy on Roblox and closely familiar with digital fashion.
To offer an in-depth squint at the digital malleate trends we’ve been seeing, we’ve partnered with one of the world’s leading institutions for art and diamond education, Parsons School of Design, to launch our ‘2022 Metaverse Malleate Trends’ report. Here are the top 5 trends.
2. The Influence of Creator Communities on Malleate Is Accelerating
In 2022 alone, more than 11.5 million creators designed over 62 million virtual suit and whatsit items on Roblox. These creators dress millions of people all over the world and impact how they express themselves both in the digital and physical worlds.
To put that in context, there are at least 200 times as many creators designing suit and traps on Roblox as the unscientific number of malleate designers creating physical collections in the United States².
In 2022, we’ve seen a large influx of global malleate and eyeful brands creating digital malleate and immersive experiences for Roblox (or integrating with existing popular experiences on the platform) – including Gucci, Burberry, Carolina Herrera, Tommy Hilfiger, NARS, Alo Yoga and supermodel and entrepreneur Karlie Kloss, as well as metaverse-only malleate companies like DRESSX. Most of these brands are tapping into the vast expertise of Roblox polity members who can help create trappy digital malleate and other engaging content on the platform.
2. Self-Expression and Inclusivity in Digital Malleate Is Essential for Gen Z
The vast majority of Gen Z who are zippy on Roblox said in our survey that they have customized their avatars, with half of them waffly their avatar’s clothing at least every week.
Just like in the physical world, people tend to connect with and react to others virtually them based on the way they squint and dress, which can have a profound impact on their self-confidence and relationships. Dressing their avatars allows consumers to express their individuality (47%) and feel good well-nigh themselves (43%), but moreover to show off their digital hodgepodge and finger increasingly unfluctuating to peers – in both the digital and physical worlds.
In fact, 2 in 5 respondents said expressing themselves with suit and traps in the digital world is MORE important than expressing themselves in the physical world.
Diverse options for avatar customization are important for the majority of polity members who can hands customize on Roblox to be whoever they want to be. In our survey, they’ve noted the importance of having a full range of skin tones (said 70%) and a full range of soul sizes (64%), withal with a full range of hair colors, textures and styles (70%).
Seven in ten consider inclusivity in digital suit designs to be “very” or “extremely” important. This rencontre can be addressed by new technology like Layered Clothing, a new full-length that’s been embraced by both our polity creators and users. Over the undertow of 2022, over 157 million users on Roblox have once uninventive both self-ruling and paid items community-created Layered Suit items.
3. Nearly 3 in 4 Gen Z Say They Spend on Digital Fashion
People are expressing themselves through their avatar style and Roblox malleate choices similarly to how they do in the physical world, with over half (53%) saying their style changes based on their mood or feelings on a particular day, and 37% waffly suit based on where they are going in the metaverse and what they are doing. Many (42%) would transpiration their clothing to immediately try on a new purchase.
Among those who say they spend money on digital fashion, 31% of users said they’d typically spend up to $5 per month and another 30% said up to $10-$20 per month, while nearly 12% will spend $50-$100 monthly. Over 1 in 4 say they’ve spent anywhere from $20 to over $100 on a single virtual item.
4. IRL Trends Influence Avatar Malleate (and Vice Versa)
In our survey, 70% of Gen Z said their avatars dress at least somewhat like their IRL style, with equally as many (70%) saying they moreover get physical style inspiration from dressing their avatars.
Take the #Barbiecore trend, which started on social media as part of the excitement for the upcoming “Barbie” movie, or Y2K nostalgia: the Roblox polity rushed to reflect these key 2022 malleate trends both in megacosm of items and their avatar styling.
The timely launch of the Forever 21 x Barbie hodgepodge helped ensure shoppers could quickly (and literally) get dolled up for their metaverse adventures, and the Y2K trend has been peaking on Roblox, with total purchases of Y2K-labeled items surpassing 188 million from January to September 2022.
5. The Prestige of Digital Malleate Is On The Rise
Recent industry research points to Gen Z’s “outsized impact on culture and economy,” given that this consumer group finance for approximately a quarter of the world’s population, and once has a purchasing power of hundreds of billions of dollars in the U.S. alone. With this demographic spending increasingly time in immersive social spaces like Roblox, the prestige and impact of digital malleate are on the rise.
More than half (58%) of respondents consider a digital malleate designer career to be just as impressive or plane increasingly impressive than the role of a physical malleate designer. This number grows significantly among people who spend up to $100 per month on avatar fashion, where 54% said stuff a digital malleate designer is increasingly impressive.
As we squint forward to the near future, we expect the next generation of malleate designers and brands to be tightly immersed in digital fashion, dressing avatars, designing 3D digital versions of their collections and creating metaverse-exclusive items.
We couldn’t be increasingly excited to interreact with the thought leaders at Parsons School of Diamond to see, withal with brands, designers, and our Roblox community, how we can remoter enable self-expression and empower our polity to wilt whoever they want to be – on our platform and beyond.
DOWNLOAD THE FULL REPORT HERE
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