Kelly Vero Industry Talk
The Condé Nast College was delighted to welcome Chief Creative Officer at Dazlus, Kelly Vero to our virtual lecture theatre for an industry talk this February.
About Kelly Vero
As Chief Creative Officer at Dazlus and a leading figure in the VR/AR industry, Kelly has always been naturally curious and quirky by nature – the perfect quality when it comes to combining fashion with video games.
Formerly, the Head of Game Development, Fashion, and Collections at SO REAL, Kelly had to come up with ingenious ways in which to take the fashion industry in a new direction with her key focus on driving technology into usability. Kelly has moved onto digital leadership at Dazlus, which enables her to combine her passion for style, innovation, and video games into one. Kelly thrives on pushing technology to its edge “through education, sustainability, and sheer hustle”.
Not content with solely being an industry leader in the gaming and technology industry for the last 25 years; developing iconic characters like Lara Croft in Tomb Raider and games like Final Fantasy X – Kelly is also a best-selling author and fiction writer with her most recent publication, Prince of Tokyo, being released in 2018.
Kelly Vero Industry Talk
Will Video Games Save Fashion?
Kelly opened her talk by discussing the challenges faced within games and digital landscaping. She went on to explain the most common reason the Fashion industry does not engage with this medium more is largely down to the cost. The budget could run between $500,000 to 1 million US dollars for mobile games, with games on a console exceeding this. Some projects Kelly has worked on in the past have come to a staggering $10 million US dollars, with 90% of this budget spent on marketing and only 10% spent on the development.
Balenciaga developed a game, ‘Afterworld: The Age of Tomorrow’, which “touted itself as a game, but was nothing more than a look book”. Whereas ‘Gucci Games’ sit more on the periphery of being closer to games and is playable. Kelly then went on to emphasise that we have to bring together fashion and games in a way that adds value and is suitable for the demographic. Kelly stated that “games are giving us something that we haven’t had before in fashion”.
Why does Kelly make games?
Kelly is always future-gazing and wants to live in a world that resembles a virtual world, Avakin life. She stated that “games give her a freedom which fashion does not” and therefore is able to understand what the TSA (target sale audience) requires. She believes that games allow you to live in a fantasy world, while still living in the present. This is an area that Kelly is extremely passionate about.
She draws strong parallels between creating a game and designing a fashion collection, as when designing both you have to consider the end-to-end experience for the consumer. She goes on to explain that the key to success is to understand who your audience is. Kelly clearly exemplified this when talking about Japan mistaking their game demographic, in which 94% of the consumers were female, yet they were trying to push the more masculine ‘The Microsoft XBox’ into the marketplace.
“We need future-gazing and future thinking ideas to stop the waste,” Kelly Vero industry talk
“We need future-gazing and future thinking ideas to stop the waste,”Kelly states that technology is the way in which the fashion world is going to become more sustainable and this needs to be emphasised more, with younger generations taking centre stage when it comes to this seismic shift.
Key takeaways from the Kelly Vero Industry Talk
- Identifying your target audience is paramount and ensuring that your marketing campaign fulfills your brief and reaches that target demographic.
- Learn from the industry and take note of both success and failures.
- Development is very costly and if executed correctly provides a very profitable and lucrative platform for any brand.
- Remember that games are the future and the saviour of fashion! “Try to make life real again but make this digital”.
Kelly’s talk was fascinating and educated us on the future of fashion and she is very eager to continue enlightening the future change-makers of the industry.
by Saydee Brown, MA Fashion Journalism student