Fashion, beauty, and luxury goods are some of the biggest categories in other parts of the attention economy, yet have not intersected with games in the same way the likes of sports or automotive have.

This has begun to change slowly over the past decade, as titles like Dress to Impress on Roblox and the Nikki series have become huge hits. Most recently, two new mobile games emerged with even bigger ambitions for this category.

The launch of Muus Collective’s Bellemint in October and the relaunch of Drest in November prompt an examination of where the intersection of fashion and gaming is heading. During COVID, luxury fashion fell hard for gaming — what has happened in the years since to change or grow this market, and where is it heading in the future?

Drest: A New Beginning

Drest was originally launched in 2019 by a founding team led by Lucy Yeomans, formerly Editor-in-Chief of Harper's Bazaar U.K. and of Net-a-Porter, an online luxury retailer. Drest's other leaders came largely from fashion magazines, and two key hires were from gaming company Glu.

Drest was envisioned as a fashion game in which consumers can interact with real brands. The company partnered with luxury ecommerce platform Farfetch to use real-life apparel and accessories in-game, and the team further leveraged their heft in the fashion world to bring on top brands like Gucci while the game was still in soft launch. Drest also acted as an affiliate partner for Farfetch, with players able to use Farfetch’s inventory in-game and then shop directly on Farfetch to buy the real items. The company referred to this as its “real to virtual to real (RVR)” strategy.

*Drest uses real fashion photography as the core of its aesthetic, even in gameplay*

The game’s core loop involves completing style challenges using real supermodels and a wide variety of licensed high fashion apparel and accessories. For example, users will be asked to use Tyra Banks’ denim line to style an edgy Y2K look; the full outfit is then submitted to the rest of the user community to rate. Higher scores give more valuable in-game rewards back to the player.

However, Drest struggled to take off. In 2022, the company appointed COO Lisa Bridgett as the new CEO, with Yeomans moving to a board position. In spring 2023, Bridgett discussed plans for an upcoming relaunch, which would be “gradually rolled out in 2023 and 2024.” But by October 2023, Bridgett was out, and the company announced the addition of Daniel Svärd, the former GM of Candy Crush Soda Saga, as the new Co-CEO to Yeomans, who returned to the role. After a six-month hiatus, Drest officially relaunched in November 2024 as an entirely new app, with a new look, a new mission of “exclusive for all,” and some new brand-friendly features like quests (branded challenges) and VIP events (branded narrative storylines).

The first VIP event was a collaboration with The Fashion Awards, giving players the chance to virtually attend the event and complete challenges using products from nominated brands and other award sponsors. A narrative feature has players using an in-game map to go on a journey through West London, starting at The Fashion Awards’ hotel partner The Peninsula London, for example.

Drest has been growing since the new app appeared in mid-2023, but it is still quite small, reaching about 4K DAU in November 2024, according to data.ai. The previous version peaked at 150K MAU in August 2021, while the new app reached 29K MAU in October 2024.

Drest Mau — *The rebooted app is growing but far from the MAU peak its predecessor reached | Source: Sensor Tower*

Since its inception, Drest has essentially acted as the fashion industry’s attempt to enter gaming: The majority of the company’s leadership had backgrounds only in fashion, not gaming, prior to founding Drest. But another new entrant into the market comes from a team with deep gaming roots.

Bellemint: A Truly Shoppable Game

Bellemint is a new game from startup Muus Collective, which entered soft launch in October. Just as Drest partnered with Farfetch to provide in-game items, Bellemint was built in collaboration with online fashion retailer Revolve. Muus Collective is backed by Griffin Gaming Partners, and most of its leadership team has many years of experience in gaming — plus, Paris Hilton is an advisory board member.

Bellemint features very deep integrations with Revolve that allows users to buy both the virtual and real-world apparel without leaving the game. In 2025, Bellemint will become connected to Revolve’s loyalty program, allowing players to earn Revolve loyalty points and other rewards through gameplay.

*Users can choose to either “Buy In-Game” or “Shop IRL,” which opens up a webview of Revolve or another site within the game client*

While Revolve is the most prominent partner, users can also buy real items from other fashion merchants and some designers selling direct-to-consumer, though many items are digital-only pieces Bellemint has created on its own (unlike Drest, in which every in-game item is also a real fashion piece).

When the partnership between Revolve and Muus Collective was announced in 2022, Muus said its forthcoming mobile game would be a web3 product, a reflection of the hype that both the gaming and fashion industries felt toward the blockchain at the time. But Bellemint released in Q4 2024 as a decidedly web2 game.

How Do These Two Games Stack Up?

These two games have different strategies even in their choice of ecommerce partner. Drest’s partner Farfetch is a much more expensive, high-end platform, while Revolve skews somewhat cheaper with brands appealing to a likely younger demographic.

The average customer at Farfetch has an average order value of $612, while Revolve shoppers spend an average of $299 per order. Since both Drest and Bellemint tap into their retail partners for their in-game items, it is likely they will appeal to a similar audience as those partners.

IAP Prices - Drest and Bellemint — *Bellemint has higher IAP prices than Drest, despite featuring less expensive brands*

Both Drest and Bellemint are challengers to market leader Covet Fashion, now part of EA’s mobile portfolio as a result of its $2.4B acquisition of Glu Mobile in 2021. Muus Collective Co-founder and CEO Sarah Fuchs was also the GM of Covet Fashion at Glu.

Originally released in 2013, Covet Fashion’s core loop of submitting designs for community votes to earn new pieces has inspired not just competitors, but also spawned the home-styling subgenre dominated by Design Home (now also part of EA through Glu), Redecor, and Venue from startup studio Superbloom (led by Emily Yim, formerly the Chief Product Officer of Drest).

What will become of these new games? Fashion and beauty are enormous markets, and there is every possibility that either Drest or Bellemint could become a breakout success. In this case, the two companies could become an attractive target for traditional game publishers seeking new audiences — but first, they will have to dislodge and surpass Covet Fashion.

Barring that, either company could become a strategic asset for the fashion retailers they already have deep partnerships with. Both games could also seek to leverage these partners for growth: Farfetch is the larger retailer with a reported 3.7M active customers, compared to Revolve’s 1.8M, according to a 2022 report. Each site operates as a platform connecting brands with consumers, and they have brand-facing marketing and technology solutions where a mobile game could be a differentiated offering. Farfetch Platform Solutions, for example, operates “in-store apps” that provide for the “seamless integration of online and offline shopping,” a description that could easily apply to Drest as well.

But while Covet Fashion has a sizable lead and an 11-year head start, Drest and especially Bellemint are pursuing a new route. Muus Collective’s deep partnership with Revolve provides it with a fundamentally different business model than a pure game like Covet Fashion, and it offers a different kind of utility to its players beyond entertainment. At the same time, Revolve, a retailer with an audience of millions, is leveraging its ecosystem to promote Bellemint, which in turn drives more traffic back to Revolve. Drest’s partnership with Farfetch promises similar outcomes — and both point to a future where retailers and ecommerce platforms embrace games in a way that extends beyond gamification and loyalty points.

The Growing World of Fashion Games

Drest and Bellemint are but a niche within the wider intersection of games and fashion. Infinity Nikki, the latest title in the wildly popular Nikki series of mobile games, released globally on December 5 and is the first game in the fashion-themed fantasy RPG franchise to feature a 3D open world (developed in Unreal Engine) and full cross-platform gameplay on PC, console, and mobile.

Pursuing a path blazed by the likes of Genshin Impact with a female-oriented, fashion-focused game is no less ambitious than Drest or Bellemint, and early reviews (including a 9/10 from IGN) point to the possibility of Infinity Nikki becoming a major hit.

Other titles like Big Name: City Lovin blend match-3 mechanics with a styling meta, and even Netflix has begun to move toward the genre by licensing Tilting Point’s FashionVerse. The "Emily in Paris" series in its Netflix Stories game also features dress-up as a core gameplay mechanic.

The notion of dressing up in-game characters has powered game economies for decades, but centering games on these features — across genres, platforms, and business models — is an area where innovators are investing their time: 2025 could be the most fashionable year yet for gaming.

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