The Dress Up Game I Never Quite Stopped Playing
Does anyone else remember those old dress up games? The ones with glittering webpage backgrounds and endless rows of gowns, shoes and handbags waiting to be clicked, dragged and dropped into place.
A princess in a yellow dress. A pop star in silver heels. A girl suddenly ready for whatever beautiful life the screen had prepared for her.
I loved those games. Not because I was especially fashionable. I wasn’t. At school, I studied econometrics and was considered, quite fairly, a little nerdy. For most of the semester, I wore the same jacket almost every day. My wardrobe was practical and designed to get me from one place to another without too much thought.
But in those games, clothes meant something else. They were a way of imagining. A way of stepping into a different version of myself.
I could dress a character for an office day and imagine myself as a lawyer, probably because I watched too much The Good Wife. I could dress her for a concert or a party, and somehow, through that small ritual, I was not just styling a doll. I was rehearsing a possible life.
I used to wish those dress up games could use my own clothes. Not fantasy gowns or cartoon wardrobes, but the jacket I actually owned, the skirt I bought and never wore, the dress waiting for the right occasion. I wanted to see not just a princess transformed, but myself, in the clothes I already had, and in the clothes I might one day dare to try.
That is where ViWear began. In a way, ViWear is a dress up game for real life. It lets you explore your own wardrobe, mix and match pieces, and try on different versions of yourself without the pressure of getting it right the first time.
It is a small private space where you can explore different styles and have fun with fashion without too much effort, a quiet pleasure of trying on a different self, the possible version of you from tomorrow.
Maybe we never really stop playing dress up. We just start calling it becoming ourselves