Fendi Unveils Their Latest Collaboration With Meta Featuring Two Iconic Augmented Reality Experiences

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Fendi

Fendi has just dropped their latest collaboration with an unlikely partner, Meta. Inspired by the brand’s history and roots, they’ve released extraordinary AR effects that reveal their new Faster sneakers. 

Fendi, the iconic standard bearer for the excellence and heritage of Italian craftsmanship and Roman savoir fare, is stepping into the future – the Metaverse, to be exact — using augmented reality to offer unprecedented interactive experiences for their customers. Following their presentation for their Men’s Fall/Winter 2022/23 collection that took place in the Metaverse and the subsequent launch of their cryptocurrency wallet, the historic Maison continues along the forward-thinking path of innovation with this latest venture. 

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Fendi

Today, augmented reality makes it possible to integrate digital experiences into the everyday context, and with this latest project Fendi opens those doors offering an original and interactive way to discover their new, iconic, Faster Sneakers – a footwear offering imbued with historic and distinct Fendi codes, an inimitable sense of Roman luxury, and finely balanced by the inclusion of technical fabrics and performance-focused touches. A clear combination of form, function, and forward-thinking design – shared through a medium to match.

Their new AR effect, called Faster by Fendi, is now available for Stories and Reels on both Facebook and Instagram worldwide. Designed as a homage to discovery, through an interactive experience that invites people to search for the Faster sneaker as if they’re a hidden treasure. By starting the effect from their cell phones and pointing to the screen at any place in the surrounding space, users will transform the environment they are in into a real archaeological site where they can use their hands for a virtual excavation. Through this experience, with simple hand movements, it will be possible to unearth a series of fragments that will reveal the Faster sneakers as authentic treasures hidden underground.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Fendi

Among the main innovations of this effect is a completely innovative use of hand detection (hands tracking). This advanced feature uses the hand taken by the cell phone as input and allows people to play with the movement in a completely natural and realistic way, in a “mixed reality” context which creates a mix between real and virtual. Sneakers are revealed to the people’s eyes in an incredible high resolution, which preserves the integrity of the physical object and provides a highly accurate digital representation of it, including lightning, textures and reflections. Try out the feature here.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Fendi

The brand’s second AR effect is called Masterpiece by Fendi, powered by an experimental technology. The effect is geo-activated in Rome near Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana at Eur, home of Fendi’s headquarters. Once users are in the AR effect, they can point their camera at the sign in front of the HQ to reveal a virtual slab of marble. The experience is a tribute to the brand’s deep connection with Rome and the classical arts and invites people to try their hand at sculpture, like modern Michelangelos, by shaping a virtual block of stone from which the Faster sneakers take shape like an authentic masterpiece. To try this new effect, click here.