If you were to walk down Madison Avenue in New York City at 8pm last Wednesday night, you would have witnessed a 4-D techno-spectacular at the Ralph Lauren flagship store in honor of their website's 10th anniversary and the launching of e-commerce in the UK. , in which their Madison Ave. “Witness the ultimate collision of fashion, art, and technology," read the invite. The show consisted of a 4-D projection in which the flagship "swayed, turned into fabric, collapsed, and reappeared before the walls retracted and a virtual runway complete with models materialized. In addition, giant neckties (a nod to the first product Ralph Lauren ever designed) spilled from the roof, but the coup de grâce came when members of Prince Charles’ polo team broke through the building’s facade and charged down the street. As for the 4 in 4-D, that would be the real Big Pony fragrance that sprayed from the virtual perfume bottles spinning over the crowd’s heads." The technology behind this event involved laser, computers, re-rendering and other big, fancy sounding technological terms. So fancy in fact, that the techno-team involved in the production of the Harry Potter movies was enlisted. The event was certainly a first for the fashion world and solidified Ralph Lauren's lock on being one of the leading designers to take advantage of technology. The brand has also taken advantage of the iPhone/iPad and it's applications and recently installed digital "window shopping" at their UK flagship, allowing customers to literally "window shop" using a touch screen on the widow of the store. The question is whether all this fancy technology will actually help the brand or not in the long-run or leave them with empty pockets.
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