French supermarket chain Carrefour, the world’s third largest retailer after Walmart and Costco, is offering its time-crunched customers a chance to see how a garment fits before they buy it—without physically trying it on first.
To mark the launch of the latest collection from its in-store clothing label, Tex, the retailer on Tuesday unveiled a virtual fitting room called Fitle.
Developed by a start-up of the same name, the technology’s premise is simple: After setting up an account on the corresponding smartphone app, shoppers can generate an avatar based on their body measurements and “selfies” taken from four different angles, which can then be used to virtually try on pieces from the fall/winter Tex collection before buying them online.
Meanwhile, at Carrefour’s Villeneuve-la-Garenne location in the northern suburbs of Paris, customers can step in front of a mirror that projects digital garments over their bodies, offering a 360-degree view of the look that they can then share on social networks or send photos to friends and family.
The retailer tested the technology at six locations last year and its initial launch is targeting female shoppers only.
Carrefour isn’t the first brick-and-mortar store to test the virtual-fit waters. Earlier this year, Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom rolled out Memory Mirror at select locations, full-size “smart” mirrors that take photos of every outfit a customer has tried on and compares the images side by side, or records a video so they can see how an outfit looks from the back or as they move.
Even Topshop has dabbled with an augmented reality solution, installing a virtual dressing room in its flagship Moscow store a few years ago that could superimpose a 3-D model of a garment on a shopper’s body.