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Ralph Lauren is expanding its presence on survival game Fortnite, as gaming proves to be a long-term strategy for luxury brands.
On 3 August, it will open its own island within the video game, called “Race to Greatness by Polo Ralph Lauren”. It will also sell a limited-edition physical version of a digital boot that originally debuted within Fortnite and references classic moments in the brand’s archives.
The Polo x Fortnite P-Wing boots will be on sale for $250 on the brand’s website with only 300 available. The digital versions are sold within the Fortnite marketplace as part of a male character’s outfit; the full outfit, including accessories, is 1,500 V-Bucks (about $15). The chunky red and black boots are modelled after digital pieces that were first introduced as wearables in Fortnite in November as part of the brand’s digital Polo Stadium collection, which was only available for eight days. The Stadium collection was first introduced by the brand in 1992, inspired by vintage images of track-and-field athletes, and in later years became highly sought after on resale sites. It was later reinterpreted and reissued in 2017.
Now, more than 30 years after the original collection was launched, it is being reintroduced to Fortnite’s audience digitally, along with additional outfits and in-game cosmetics inspired by the 1990’s Polo Sport line. The pieces are generally the equivalent of approximately $10 or less, and will be featured in the Fortnite marketplace for the first two weeks of August.
The physical pieces-turned-digital designs introduce the Fortnite community to the brand’s heritage and further tests whether players are willing to pay for physical versions of their in-game upgrades. It also is a chance for Ralph Lauren to lean into the high-fidelity graphics and creator tools offered by Fortnite parent company Epic Games, which were built with brands and creatives in mind.
“It’s an amazing opportunity to stretch the teams and try something new,” says David Lauren, Ralph Lauren’s chief branding and innovation officer. “To be able to look into cyberspace for inspiration is pretty cool, and to build out the world is a new paradigm.” The creative teams balanced new concepts with “visual cues that would speak to this generation”, he adds. “Things that are ’90s are trending with a younger generation again, and we thought that would be fun to mix and match in a new way.”
The intricate design details expand beyond the clothes. The new island is Ralph Lauren’s first branded landscape in Fortnite, meaning that it is a dedicated area with the look, feel and gameplay fully designed by the brand and separate from the original Fortnite experience. It is shaped like a Polo pony and includes three themes that emphasise adventure and the outdoors: an aeroplane hangar, the Rocky Mountains and a forest. There is also a building that showcases the new boots enclosed by digital glass. Within these are various design details inspired by previous fashion collections, branded home goods and the eponymous founder’s own properties, including glossy black floors, carbon fibre and leather RL-CF1 chairs and light fixtures from Lauren’s personal garage.
“The ability to be able to go from something 200 years in the past to shoot forward in the future is very inspiring and exciting,” Lauren says. “Anything is possible today — any time and any period. We are living in a world that is beyond a mashup; it’s a total cross-pollination of everything.”
The experience was created using a handful of new tools from Epic Games: these include its Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN), which enables creators to use Epic’s 3D graphics tool, Unreal Engine, to design games and experiences specifically for Fortnite. It is part of Fortnite’s updated version of Fortnite Creative, which enables people to create and publish their own experiences.
Fortnite has about 70 million monthly active users, and more than 60 per cent of its audience is 25 or older, according to data from gaming intelligence platform Geeiq. They are more than two times as likely as the average gamer to be interested in retailer sporting goods, and 1.75 times more interested in sporting apparel, according to Geeiq’s dashboard. In 2020, 70 per cent of Fortnite players said they’d made in-game purchases (with outfits and characters the most common buys) — the average user spent about $85, according to LendEDU.
Games have become an important destination for fashion and beauty: they introduce paid-for digital goods and a younger audience. That’s why the most popular among them, including Fortnite, Roblox and Zepeto, have expanded beyond traditional gameplay to encompass a wide swath of experiences. When evaluating platforms, brands face a number of factors, among the most important are player demographics (such as age, income, location and density); the look of the digital spaces and goods; and the platform’s gameplay and other mechanics. They must also weigh whether they build their own world — which would enable more control of the environment — or if they build within an existing ecosystem to capture the endemic audience.
That’s partly why in recent months, Epic Games has been enjoying considerable traction in branded partnerships as it promotes its latest version of Unreal Engine — which can be used to design experiences both within and outside of the Fortnite ecosystem, and with graphics that offer a more high-definition, photorealistic look than others. In June, Nike announced Airphoria, its own branded island that includes a sneaker hunt and an in-game rewards while promoting Air Max sneakers from 1986. Also in June, LVMH announced a years-long partnership with Epic Games whose scope is far beyond Fortnite, spanning digital fitting rooms and augmented reality. Other brands to appear in Fortnite include Balenciaga and Moncler.
David Lauren says that the experience of designing worlds and clothing digitally has already influenced how the team approaches physical experiences, as the same team that recently worked on a physical event in the Hamptons worked on the “Race to Greatness” project in Fortnite. He adds that now that the island is built, the concepts and the space can be expanded upon, and the team is considering what a shopping experience or evening of entertainment might look like. “This is just the beginning. Building out the garage was a total fantasy … and this Unreal experience gave us 20 new ideas.”
Ralph Lauren’s first presence on Fortnite was in October 2022, with in-game and physical clothing that featured a hybrid logo with Ralph’s Lauren’s polo player sitting atop Fortnite’s llama. Prices for both were comparable to other existing pieces (digital pieces generally cost less than $15, and physical pieces were less than $200. It has also appeared in Roblox for a two-week winter escape during the 2021 holiday season (which also offered vintage styles), in Zepeto in August of 2021 and began dressing Bitmoji avatars in 2020.
To promote this new appearance in Fortnite, the brand will host a two-hour live streaming event on Twitch, in which viewers will be able to interact with top gamers via interviews, games and challenges. Naturally, the players will be wearing Polo — both digitally and physically.
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