The Catwalk in My Pocket
I never expected a frantic Roblox session to reshape my thoughts on the future of fashion retail. Yet the first time my avatar stomped across the Dress to Impress runway—sequin halo jiggling, timer ticking—I felt a jolt of pure play. That two‑minute scramble to craft a theme‑perfect look (“Ice Princess” that night) reminded me why I first fell in love with clothes: the thrill of possibility and the delight of an audience. Ten minutes later over one million other players were doing the same, a record that briefly out‑paced even Fortnite’s concurrent population (linkedin.com). At that moment, I realized gamified styling loops are not a sideshow to fashion—they might be its most powerful engine of engagement.
This essay dives deep into two case studies—Dress to Impress and the emerging wardrobe‑playground Merazine—to argue that intrinsic fun is at least as valuable as logistical efficiency in fashion tech. By comparing their mechanics, demographics, and business impact against more utilitarian “virtual try‑on” tools, I show that playful self‑expression drives longer sessions, higher loyalty, and richer brand love than can be thinkable when focussing merely on tools for efficiency (virtual try-ons, algorithmic pricing, etc).
Dress to Impress: A Runway Royale
Launched by four friends in 2023, Dress to Impress (DTI) has since logged more than six billion visits and grown to a team of thirty‑plus (vogue.com). Fascinatingly, 43 percent of its audience is now over 18, disproving the stereotype that Roblox is strictly for tweens (vogue.com). Launched on Roblox, it is clear that Dress to Impress has taken on a life, brand, and cult following of its own.
This game simulates a fashion runway where players compete live in multiplayer format to compose outfits around a chosen theme and walk down a runway. Participants then also vote on each other’s outfits. At the end of each round, rankings are released and top players are rewarded. Players compete with each other to achieve Top Model rank.
As a theory for what draws this crowd of multiple millions to the game, I find that the game mechanics are an exciting recipe satisfying the three psychological nutrients of Self‑Determination Theory (SDT)—autonomy, competence, relatedness—long known to super‑charge intrinsic motivation (researchgate.net). There is autonomy in pick‑your‑look, competence via visible improvement, and relatedness through live judging. All of these elements work together to engrain an adrenaline-fueled “just one more round” mindset. Session times routinely exceed the three‑to‑five‑minute skim typical on apparel e‑commerce sites – although each round lasts about 6 minutes, playing multiple rounds to increase your rank is common and driven by the game mechanics; my little sister and her teenage friends routinely play this game fanatically for 30-40 minutes at a stretch. The game monetizes lightly, yet its time‑on‑brand value for fashion partners is staggering. Luxury labels are lining up for collaborations after seeing that 84 percent of Gen Z users in a survey say their real‑world style is influenced by their avatars on Roblox (vogue.com). User-generated content and cross-promotional sharing, a growth strategy being constantly pursued by fashion and retail tech brands, is endemic to the Dress to Impress community which love sharing posts of fabulous outfits and has turned Pose 28 – one of the ramp walk poses in Dress to Impress – into a viral meme on TikTok (vogue.com).
While you can’t directly buy real-life clothes on Dress to Impress, the amount of exposure it gives to brands it centers is enviable, given its large fanbase and virality. This aspect positions Dress to Impress as being more than just a game. It’s one of the big players in fashion trend-setting, and a crucial growth engine for brands. It has achieved this remarkable feat by tapping into its audience’s crucial intrinsic motivations when it comes to fashion – self-expression, creativity, and showing off – and turned them into game elements that provide delight at every step. Overall, the success of Dress to Impress demonstrates to the fashion tech community that there is value in delivering experiences that make shopping and fashion fun, and not just addictive, compulsive, and so fast and easy that you don’t even think twice before clicking on “buy.” Gamification and tapping into intrinsic motivators can be the secret sauce to a brand’s stickiness and retention metrics.
Merazine: Art Over Accuracy
If DTI is a raucous shopping‑mall runway, Merazine feels like an indie atelier and mood‑boarding studio rolled into one. The iOS‑only app lets users curate outfits from 600+ emerging, often sustainable brands on stylized block‑figure avatars (apps.apple.com). Daily challenges (“Style a Coastal Cowgirl Weekend”) create goal‑oriented play, while in‑app leaderboards reward aesthetic daring.
While Dress to Impress centers gaming, Merazine leverages gamification – and in fact, even many of the aspects of Dress to Impress – to power stickiness on its shopping and retail platform. It is also a hot new startup founded by two Stanford grads, Krithi Reddy ‘21 and Sreya Halder ‘24. For these reasons, it seemed like the perfect bridge from our discussion of the popularity of Dress to Impress to a real-life example of its principles in action in a shopping app.
Crucially, what sets Merazine apart from other online retailers is that it outright rejects photo‑realism. Its hand‑drawn avatars keep proportion abstract so users focus on silhouette, color, and narrative rather than body anxieties. A company FAQ explicitly frames the experience as “an app that turns online shopping into a game” (merazine.com). An Italian fashion‑tech review lauds it for promoting discovery of small sustainable labels through aesthetic-based mood‑boards rather than endless disparate rows and simple size filters (nssmag.com).
In a year of launch, Merazine has seen over 150k+ downloads, showing audience interest in exploring more artistic aspects of fashion over utility-based questions like “does this make me look skinny” etc. The founders share anecdotes on LinkedIn of users who take up hours of their screen time on the app, and those who find weird loopholes to surpass the one-challenge-per-day limit so they can keep competing in mood board creation challenges multiple times in a day (linkedin.com) (linkedin.com). In a world where VCs are pouring millions of dollars into AI and Virtual-Reality powered realistic digital avatars for virtual try-ons, Merazine is taking its vision into the exact opposite direction – saying, through its design, that it isn’t even important for avatars to be realistic. Their block avatars shift the focus from realism into fantasy, and it is obviously working.
The design of Merazine seems to be a response to, and a rebellion against, the times that we live in. In a world where it is so easy to create a false sense of realism, with the rise of Generative AI technology and deepfakes, maybe it can be more useful to remove the question of “is this a true depiction” rather than attempt to answer it. Users will always be skeptical of the veracity of online images of physical products – and with good reason. The picture is never as good as the real thing. So what’s the answer to their woes? Seminal theory in media psychology and social computing suggests that technology should not strive to replicate the benefits of technology. This is a quest in which it will never succeed, as real life will always, inevitably, be better than its digital replica. Instead, we should ask the question of what is lacking from real life itself, and then figure out how we can use technology to bridge that gap. This tends to be a much better approach to innovation, as we have seen time and time again (The Media Equation). Merazine does this by cutting away from reality and presenting a cartoonised, fantastical version of shopping that is impossible to replicate anywhere else. It elevates shopping to a level above that which it exists in IRL. Therein lies its beauty.
Gamification vs. Utility
Most fashion‑tech startups chase utility metrics: better fit prediction, AR color accuracy, frictionless checkout. Virtual try‑ons—whether AI body mapping or Snapchat‑style AR overlays—can certainly move needles. A 2024 industry meta‑analysis reported up to 30 percent conversion lifts and 20 percent return reductions for early adopters (forbes.com). But these gains plateau; once a shopper trusts sizing, novelty fades.
Gamified platforms, meanwhile, attack retention. Forbes reports brands adding game‑loops to loyalty programs saw 22 percent jumps in year‑over‑year customer retention (forbes.com). That’s a compounding asset: each retained user becomes cheaper to re‑engage, a powerful hedge against paid‑ad inflation. Not to mention – games or gamified apps like Merazine or Dress to Impress become a launchpad for user-generated content, which means infatuated users spread the joy of your app to new users organically. There are many payoffs to being simply fun.
Even more than that, I see what Merazine specifically is doing as an opportunity to shape the cultural conversation around fashion. By shifting shoppers’ focus from extrinsic motivators such as purchasing brand names or selecting for the most flattering items, to more intrinsic drivers, Merazine is implicitly teaching its shoppers what to prioritise in their online fashion search. This will a) attract shoppers who share Merazine’s philosophy and therefore maybe don’t center concerns on fit or flattery as much as other shoppers and b) flip the script on why its users buy the clothes that they do. Through this mechanism, Merazine holds potential to lower return-rates through an internal behavior change in its user base – i.e. making them think less of the importance of the perfect fit – instead of trying to ensure better matches in terms of that particular metric in the first place. This shift in thinking has the potential to positively affect body image particularly amongst young girls. Fashion can feel too much about being skinny sometimes, with Size 0 models on runways and ad campaigns. An app that doesn’t centre anything about body size or looks is a breath of fresh air.
Why Intrinsic Joy Wins the Long Game
SDT research shows behaviors driven by autonomy, competence, and relatedness persist even when rewards disappear (researchgate.net). That persistence is gold in fashion, where margins hinge on repeat purchases and word‑of‑mouth sparkle. When players in Dress To Impress proudly share screenshots on TikTok, they become unpaid micro‑influencers. When Merazine stylists discover a Latvian up‑cycler and post a fit, they give that label free global shelf space.
Moreover, social commerce projections peg the U.S. market at $80 billion by 2025—double 2021 figures (mckinsey.com). Gen Z already shops inside entertainment platforms; 84 percent Roblox users pull real‑life outfit inspo from their avatars (vogue.com). Marrying commerce to gameplay is simply following users where they already find meaning.
Conclusion: The Joy Dividend
Dress to Impress and Merazine prove a simple truth: when fashion feels like a game, users stay for the journey, not just the jacket. Virtual try‑ons may trim return logistics, yet they seldom ignite the imagination. By contrast, a two‑minute runway scramble or a pastel avatar doodle transforms shopping into an act of storytelling. That intrinsic fun produces measurable loyalty bumps, viral social loops, and ultimately higher lifetime value.
In the next decade, the winning fashion‑tech platforms will be those that treat efficiency as necessary plumbing—but treat play as the headline act. The runway of the future is pixelated, participatory, and powered by joy. Brands that design for human motivation, not just machine precision, will own the audience encore.
